


Chased

by WriteandRoller00



Series: Detained [2]
Category: Transformers (Bay Movies), Transformers - All Media Types
Genre: F/M, M/M, You're Welcome, here it is, you asked for a sequel
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-07-17
Updated: 2018-10-06
Packaged: 2019-06-12 04:18:04
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 7
Words: 27,060
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15331566
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/WriteandRoller00/pseuds/WriteandRoller00
Summary: Twelve years have gone by since Dorothy Haven got that Allspark fragment stuck in the back of her neck. With the battle of Chicago five years behind her and her kids, she's in hiding and was having the greatest life you could think a woman with seven kids could have. But of course, when you have an alien source of power in your body, you don't just leave that kind of crazy lifestyle. Something always seems to pull her back.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> You asked and I produced. Hope you enjoy!

Dorothy Haven, one of the most powerful humans on the planet of Earth and the holder of the last fragment of the Allspark, didn’t really want to be sitting in the principal’s office for the fifth time this year.

The woman looked over at the two boys beside her, identical in looks and in clothing style besides on having dark red hair and black and red clothes and the other having black hair and light purple and blue clothes one. The two boys were sitting in the chairs with their knees hugged up against their chests and chose not to look directly into the woman’s eyes. They could tell she was upset and that they were going to get grounded when they got home, but they couldn’t really help themselves. They grew up most of their lives around Decepticons of all things and everyone’s malicious attitudes seemed to rub off of them. They were lucky if they even had desserts tonight.

“So, please tell me what Fred and Ron did this time, Mr. Warren.” Dorothy asked, leaning back in her chair and trying not to sound overly irritated. “I’m pressed for time since I still have to pick up Lara and Betty from the middle school, Ryan from his kindergarten class and I left my youngest at home with my oldest.”

“Of course, Ms. Haven.” the principal continued and looked over at the other parent that seemed a little too prim and proper for her daughter too be attended a public school in the middle of Texas. “Mrs. Florence, I think that you and your daughter are overreacting on the amount of damage done.”

“My little girl has been violated by those two ruffians and I wish for them to be expelled from the school!” the woman cried out, sounding like a British monarch right out of the 18th century.

“What exactly did they do?” the mother of the two boys asked, quirking a brow and fixing her glasses.

“They got paint on her favorite dress!” the other mother yelled, pointing at the large spot of red paint on the bottom hem of the pink dress the little chubby girl besides her. She was sobbing into her mother’s side and the mother was glaring at the two boys. “You, Ms. Haven, seem to be incapable of taking care of your children and disciplining them!”

“Excuse me?” Dorothy asked, chuckling to herself. Who did this mother think she was? She wasn’t a dictator to her children, even if she did punishes them harshly sometimes for doing stupid things, but she loved her kids and hoped that this mother came into the real world at some point because there was no way in hell that she was going to let this woman think that she couldn’t take care of kids. “That seems extremely biased, Mrs. Florence. Do you know what happened to your daughter exactly?”

“We don’t.” Mr. Warren cut in, looking at Dorothy with some concern. “Fred and Ron have refused to tell us anything truthfully.”

“We have!” the kid in red yelled, standing up in his chair. “We told you Francis Murkinson was throwing paint at us from across the room and we retaliated! We didn’t mean to get paint on her dress! We weren’t even aiming for her! Where is the justice in this society?!”

“Fred, sit down now.” the mother of the boys grounded out, making the little boy freeze and sit back down with a bit of fear. Dorothy never used that kind of tone with her voice unless the twins did something very wrong. The woman looked over at the mother and sighed. “I’m sorry. I can pay for the dress, if you want.”

“No, I don’t want money.” the other woman protested. She looked over at the two boys and seemed to go rabid as she tried to reach for one of them. “I want them to be thrown out of this school!”

A hand grabbed the other woman’s as Dorothy seemed to magically appear in front of the two boys and squeeze the woman’s wrist hard. Her usual hazel eyes flickered a glowing blue for a few seconds as she stared down the mother. The two of them stood there for a while before Dorothy realized that she had done it again and let of the woman’s arm, growling a bit. “Don’t touch my kids, lady. I’m not as prim and proper as you are, so I’m not afraid to stuff you in a smelting pot it you even think of hurting my babies.”

“Ms. Haven.” Mr. Warren called out and distracted the woman’s attention. “Just keep the boys out of school for a few days. They can come back on Friday. I’m sorry for the inconvenience, but I can let them go this time. I hope you can understand.”

“Yes. Of course. Boys, let’s go pick up your siblings.” Dorothy replied, nodding to the principal of the school before glaring at the mother as she walked out of the office with her kids at her sides. Once she got out in the hallway, she groaned and banged her head against the tile wall. She looked back at her kids and tried so hard not to yell at them. She could see that they were scared and knew why. Her eyes were glowing blue again, which usually meant that the woman was pissed. “Five years, boys. Five years since Chicago and you still can go it under wraps.”

“We’re sorry.” Frenzy spoke up, looking down at his sneakers and fiddling with his hands. “We’re trying, Carrier.”

“I know, I know.” the mother replied, squatting down to look at the boys. She could see the shame in their eyes, since they knew what they did was wrong and that Dorothy was upset. She remembered when she had to explain to all the kids why they needed to use their holo-avatars in public and whenever someone they didn’t know came to the house. They all hated it, but suffered through it for the past five years. This was the first year she was letting all the kids go to school and it was almost over. The summer would be a lot easier and she wouldn’t have to worry about the boys causing trouble, or anything else. The glowing blue in the woman’s eyes faded and she looked at her kids. “I’m sorry I lost my temper.”

Frenzy and Rumble smiled and ran forward to hug their carrier, squeezing her chest as she chuckled and hugged back. The three of them stayed like this for a long time before the woman stood up and sighed. The two boys looked a little happier and seemed to stand taller than before. “So are we still in trouble?” Rumble asked.

“Definitely.” the woman replied and earned a whine from the cassette twins. “I’m not grounding you, since you didn’t mean to cause any harm to the girl, but you did try to through paint at someone. So no dessert tonight for you, too.”

“That’s not fair!” Frenzy exclaimed as they started walking down to the kindergarten wing of the school building. “It was Rumble’s idea!”

“No, it wasn’t!” the other twin argued back. “It was Frenzy’s idea!”

“Both of you are still getting no dessert, so stop complaining.” Dorothy answered back, walking up to Ratbat’s classroom and knocking on the door, since she knew that the end of the day was the time where the teacher let the kids nap until their parents came to pick them up. The teacher came to open the door and waved for her to come inside. “You two wait here.”

The boys nodded and sat down against the wall, sighing and secretly coming up with new pranks to pull on Ravage when they got home. Dorothy walked inside the class and smiled as she saw her second youngest curled up under a blanket with his Zubat plushie in his arms. The mother made her way through the sea of children and picked up the dark-haired child in her arms, keeping the blanket wrapped around him as he snuggled up to her shoulder. Dorothy mouthed a thank you to the teacher as she left the classroom and motioned for the boys to follow her.

The family excited the school building to see Laserbeak and Buzzsaw sitting on the edge of the curb by the car with their phones out and seemingly bored. They both looked up at the same time and smiled at bit at their family as they walked up. “Thank Primus you guys got her. We were waiting for thirty minutes and it’s hot out here.” Laserbeak muttered as she stood up and retied her long dark red hair into a ponytail. “What happened this time, Thing One and Thing Two? Eat some paste?”

“Laser, cut it out.” her sister scolded her as she stood up as well. “That’s not nice.”

“Since when are we nice, Buzz?” the redhead asked the blonde as they walked over to their side of the car. “Anyways, can you open the door now, Carrier? These holo-avatars are sweating and it’s disguising.”

“It’s not disgusting. It’s how the human body keeps itself cool.” the mother answered back as she took the car keys out of her jean pocket and unlocked the car.

The two pairs of twins rushed to the car and hopped inside, deactivating their holoforms and letting their frames all transform back into their normal selves. The two bird-like cassettes in the backseat started to fight over the seats with the two mech-like cassettes as Dorothy got in the driver’s seat and placed the sleeping Ratbat in the passenger seat, next to his frame. The woman started the car and all of the kids in the back found somewhere to sit, either on the seat or on the floor of the car. “Why do Laserbeak and Buzzsaw always get the seat!?” Rumble argued.

“Because we’re femmes, dumbaft.” the red condor answered back. “And the polite thing for mechs to do it allow femmes to go first. Right, Carrier?”

“More or less.” Dorothy answered back as they started driving back to their house. Sooner or later, everyone seemed to come down in the backseat and the mother of all the children was left with some silence and sometime to think about things. It had been five years since the Battle of Chicago and five years since she had seen Soundwave. The human sighed as she remembered how much she missed him and wished he was here to help her take care of the kids. Of course, she hasn’t seen the Autobots either in that amount of time or Barricade, but it was hard being a mother of seven kids all by herself.

The woman brought her hand back to trace the edges of the hidden fragment still lodged into her spinal cord. She had learn that those two figures in her head during her coma were right about the war that was going to happen. She had learned also that the fragment was the only thing keeping her alive. Ratchet had told her that since it was connected to her spinal cord, that removing it would kill her. The only benefits of being having the fragment was that she had some abilities that have helped her protect herself and her kids and that she could know live as long as a cybertronian could. Heck, she was 34 years old and she still looked 22. She could make energy shields, control the life energy from the fragment, and apparently could talk to Primus and Unicron at some points. But she hated it, since it made her a target and put her kids in danger.

The car ride back to the house was long, since they lived outside of the main suburban area. They lived in a big house in the middle of a small forest, giving them lots of privacy from the government and from everyone else. The woman technically owned the land, but people did come to swim in the lake behind the meadow. Ratbat had woken up during the ride and was looking out the window as they drove through the forest. Dorothy pulled up the long driveway to see Ravage sitting down on the side of the hill and holing Toxin in his paws. The cybertronian panther looked exhausted, but what did you expect when you were taking care of a sparkling? All the kids jumped out of the car and sprinted into the house, leaving Dorothy behind with the groceries.

“Carri!” The woman looked up from grabbing all the bags and saw Toxin jumping up and down excitedly at her feet. The little mech had learned to walk by himself, but still had some problems walking at the pace he wanted to go without falling over. Dorothy chuckled and looked at Ravage as the giant panther walked up and smiled.

“Let me take those, Dorothy.” the cat commented, leaning into the back of the car and picking up the all of the bags into his mouth before walking around the back of the house to enter in through the larger doors of the house since he didn’t fit through the front door.

“Thank you, Ravage.” the woman called after him as she closed the trunk of her car. Once the panther left, the woman reached down and picked up the child into her arms, nuzzling him. Little Toxin was still a sparkling of very few words, but his vocabulary was getting better. His words were mostly mispronounced or shorter versions of the actual word, but Dorothy frankly didn’t care. She was just happy that her youngest was able to learn things without being able to go to school yet, being that he wasn’t old enough for kindergarten and his holo-avatar hadn’t been created yet. “Hello, sweetspark. You have a good time with Ravage?”

“Yeah! Kitty!” the sparkling giggled and nodded, snuggling his helm into his carrier’s shoulder as they walked into the house. Dorothy locked her car from the doorway before closing the door and placing her bag down by the coat rack. She saw that all the bags were already in the kitchen and the two bird cassettes were putting the groceries away. Since the cassettes all had holo-avatars, besides Toxin, they all ate human food and energon with it. But since energon was slightly radioactive, Dorothy had to be careful when feeding her little bitlet and usually let Ravage do it. “Food!”

“Yes, baby. I know, but you don’t have your holo-form upgrade yet so I can’t give you human food.” the woman replied, sitting Toxin on the counter as she placed her car keys on the hook over where she kept all the bills. She picked up the mail Ravage brought in earlier and scanned through the letters, seeing that some were bills and others were just advertisements. “Once Soundwave comes back, he’ll upgrade you and then we can all eat as a family.”

“And when if he coming back exactly, Carrier?” Laserbeak asked, perching on the counter besides the little black and green mechling. His little winglets were flapping as he clung onto the other’s long neck, giggling happily. “He’s been gone for five years now, and he hasn’t shown any signs of coming out of hiding.”

“I know, but he’s trying not to get caught by Cemetery Wind, like what I’m doing with you all. He hasn’t forgotten about us, Laserbeak. He’s your sire and he loves us very much, but he’s… he’s coming back.” That’s all that Dorothy could say, being that she didn’t really know any more than that. She wanted her mate back just like the kids, but she didn’t know where he was or when he was coming back. One of the many perks of being in love with a Decepticon, she guessed. She turned around to see Buzzsaw had joined them and they were all looking at her with large sad optics. The woman sighed and hugged them all squeezing them a lot. “I love you kids so much. No matter what happens, I’m never letting you go. I’ll keep you safe, just like I have been for the last twelve years of my life.”

“We know, Carrier.” the two femme cassettes answered back in unison before flying off to go hang out in the living room. The mother smiled and looked over at Toxin, who was squirming and jumping around as he was picked up by Dorothy again. He wanted to go play with his sisters, too. The woman wasn’t having the little mechling run away from her this time and placed him in the living room where his play pen was. Once he was seated and was playing with a few of the tools he had, Dorothy checked the time to see she needed to make dinner.

“Rumble, Frenzy, come down stairs please!” she yelled up to hear two thuds above her helm before the two other mech-like cassettes in the household came running down the stairs. They skidded to a stop in front of her, but Frenzy tripped over Rumble and sent the two of them to the floor. They groaned as Dorothy chuckled and pulled them up to their feet. “Go start the mac and cheese on the stove with Ravage while I go to the garage to check on our other resident.”

“Got it!” they both replied before speeding off to the kitchen and pulled the holo-avatar of Ravage from the walkway without any explanation. The mother of the children chuckled again before going to the basement door and grabbing the metal contained on the top stair by the handle. Closing the door, she carefully walked past Toxin, who had passed out on the floor of the play pen and walked out through the two large back doors of the house. She walked off the edge of the back porch and made her way down the large hill that the household was on.

The property was big, since it was most of the meadow area of the forest and the large pond nearby. The only reason she was allow to be on this plot of land was because the government owned it and she “bought” it after the fall of Chicago. It was supposed to be a military base, but it never got finished all the way, meaning that airplanes were just out in the middle of the field and there were barbwire fences all around the property. It was good for Dorothy, since it helped her keep her family safe from trespassers or house buyers. Most importantly, it was shown on maps to still be owned by the government, so no one trying to hunt down cybertronians came here.

On the other side of the meadow that had overgrown part of the base, there was a huge jet hangar that was bolted shut from the inside. The human finally got to it and walked around the side, pushing open a really rusted shut door with ease and pushing it shut again. The lights flickered on when she walked in and she smiled, loving the look of the place every time she was in her. Walking over to a big metal structure in the middle of the airplane garage, she flipped on the light over the structure’s head with the control panel and placed the container down to wait.

Two crimson red optics faded on before a large groan echoed off of the walls as the metal structure started to stretch and sit up. “Good morning, Starscream. How’d you sleep?” the woman asked, leaning against the panel and warmly smiled up at the seeker from where he was sitting up against the wall.

“Well, for the most part.” the mech complained a bit, stretching out his arms and doing an overall systems check before trying to scoot any closer. “This new body has so many new systems that it makes it hard to recharge without memory fluxes hitting you left and right. But I must say, I do feel a lot better now that my voice doesn’t erupt my audio receptors every five nanoklicks.”

“Thank Soundwave for the upgrade. I may have gotten you a frame, but he’s the one who placed in all the new systems that you-know-who forbid you to install.” Dorothy replied, smiling as she pushed the container forwards towards the mech’s leg. The seeker was right, since she’s the one who fixed his voice box in the first place. After the battle of Chicago, the woman had found Starscream nearly dead in the middle of a streets. So being the nice person she was and keeping her promise that she kept all those years back, she and Soundwave made his a new body and fixed some parts that Megatron had damaged a long time ago. “I brought you some energon, since I forgot to bring you some this afternoon. The boys got called to the principal’s office again and I had to go.”

The seeker’s wings, since they were now free from his back and not completely jointed down like in his last frame, shook as he chuckled a bit. His voice was still a little gravelly, but that was as best as the woman could do for him. His voice was much deeper now though, making it easier to listen to than the high-pitched squealing voice he had before. He opened the lid of the contained before taking a long sip, relaxing a bit more now that energon was in his tanks. “You can’t blame them, Dorothy. They’re Decepticons by nature and those two trouble-makers were bound to end up in there anyway.”

“You don’t have to tell me twice, Star.” the mother replied, pinching the bridge of her nose. “One kid was throwing paint at them and they threw some back, but it landed on a girl’s dress. Trust me, the mother of that girl couldn’t have been more snobby than she was, but I wouldn’t put it past her.”

The two shared a short laughed before something crashed on the other side of the warehouse, causing Starscream’s defense systems to go online and his null rays activated towards the area of the noise. After a few seconds, one little wing popped up from behind an empty storage crate and the little cassette pulled himself up onto it. “I okay!” the little mechling cried.

“Ratbat, you scared us.” Dorothy chuckled, smiling as the little bat giggled and few over towards them, clinging onto his carrier’s front before making a fake roar at her. The woman smiled down at her second youngest before shifting him to sit higher up on her chest. “Did you come to say hello to Uncle Starscream?”

“Yah!” he squeaked before flying up to the seeker’s face and sticking onto it, covering up the mech’s sight and nuzzling his face. “Hewwo, Uncle Star!”

“Hello to you too, Ratbat.” the mech replied, cupping the little bat in case he fell off. He gently kissed the cassette’s underbelly before gently taking him off and placing him on the panel next to the woman. “I’m having my dinner right now, and I’m sure you have to go have yours. I’ll talk to you later tonight, Ratbat. I promise, alright?”

The little metal bat nodded, climbing onto his carrier’s back and laying his helm down. “Bedtime story?” he asked, watching the seeker for an answer.

“Why not.” the ex-SIC of the Decepticons answered back, reaching down to give the little cassette a rub on the helm. “I’ll tell you about the cybertronian dragon tonight and how he protected Cybertron from enemies, like your carrier does for Earth.”

“Starscream, stop. I’m not that great.” Dorothy responded, making her way out of the hangar the same way she came in. She pushed the rusty door open as she and Ratbat waved goodbye to the seeker as he took another sip of energon. The two left to go back up to the house and get the rest of dinner ready. The woman silently hoped the Ravage didn’t let the boys burn down the house. She quickly peaked in through the back door of the porch before stepping in to smell dinner not burnt and actually done for once. “Thank you Primus.” she sighed.

She picked up Toxin, who was still asleep on the floor and placed Ratbat down on the plush chair in the living room, letting the tiny bat activate his holo-avatar. The little boy giggled and grabbed his Zubat plushie before running into the kitchen to go sit at the table. Ravage passed by the little boy, smiling as he grabbed the biker’s helmet from the coat rack. Dorothy didn’t notice that the shaggy haired teen was going to leave until the little sparkling in her arms woke up and saw him. “Kitty!”

The panther froze in opening the door as he heard Dorothy turn around to face him. “And where are you going?”

“Biking with some friends at high school?” he replied, more as a question since he knew the woman hated him going out at night and risking his safety of being caught.

The mother stood there for a while as Toxin patted her chest, signaling he was hungry and needed food. “Fine. But you can’t come home if you don’t win the race.”

“Will do-wait.” the nearly adult cybertronian replied, pausing to understand what she said. “How did you know-“

“You waxed yourself his morning.” Dorothy replied, walking towards the kitchen as she heard the phone ring. “Don’t think I didn’t see that fifty you stole from the counter this morning to go get yourself a wash, wax and coffee before school.”

The black-haired male groaned, shifting the tooth necklace around his neck before stepping out of the house to go to his race. “See you tonight, Dorothy!” he called, slamming the door behind him.

“Yeah, whatever you crazy furball!” she called back, chuckling to herself as she answered the phone. It was Cade, a friend seem made a while back after she had first moved her with the kids. Her daughter, Tessa, and Ravage were relatively the same age compared to human years. They were both seventeen and they went to the same high school, so that’s how the two parents met each other. They were in the same carpool line one day and she had fixed the man’s truck since it broke down.

The man on the other side of the line seemed really excited for no reason until he started explaining to her something. “Wait, Cade, slow down! What about a truck?”


	2. Chapter 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Optimus is alive and sadly, that's never a good thing.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hope you enjoy!

Dorothy put down her phone and looked at the screen saying that the call she was on with Cade had ended. A million thoughts were running through her mind as she sat there knowing two things: Optimus Prime was back and the kids were in danger again.

She had told Cade to call her back after the kids had finished dinner, which he did but not with good news. The inventor told her on how he found a truck that turned out to be a transformers that needed to be repaired. He told her that these people called Cemetery Wind showed up and this other scary black transformer had blown up their house. All of them, Cade, Tessa and now Shane, were with the transformer on the run with the government tracking them. Dorothy didn’t speak the entire time Cade was talking, not wanting to let the kids know how incredibly scared she was. She said goodbye and hung up, sitting down in the chair in the living room to watch the kids.

She knew Cade was talking about Optimus the moment he started explaining what happened. The man didn’t say his name, but she that there was only cybertronian in the entire galaxy to break their cover over something like protecting humans. Dorothy didn’t really care for her own species anymore, knowing that most of them were stupid and not worth the amount of love she had for her family and the cybertronians she cared about the most. The inventor never mentioned any other vehicles, meaning that Bumblebee and the others were still in hiding. That was good, but she knew that if the government was hunting down Cade, they would be tracking his calls.

Around nice o’clock, Dorothy needed to get the kids to bed before someone she didn’t know came knocking on her door and Frenzy or Rumble tried to answer it. All the kids were watching Pokémon in the living room with her, Frenzy, Rumble, Ratbat and Toxin all sitting with their favorite plushies on the floor while the girls were sitting on the couch. The mother of them all grabbed the remote and turned off the TV, all the children gasping and starting to complain about how she turned it off and why she would do something like that. Dorothy put the remote back down and picked Toxin up from the floor. “To bed, all of you.”

“Wait, us too?” Laserbeak asked, moving her wing to point to her sister. “But we’re so much old than them.”

“I know, but you all need to go to bed, okay?” the woman replied back, gently hugging her youngest closer to her body. She smiled warily down at the little sparkling and kissed his forehelm, making him giggle and curl up in her arms with a yawn. All of the kids could tell something was wrong with their carrier, knowing that she focused on keeping Toxin happy whenever she was upset or nervous about something. The two condors took off from the couch and flew up into the rafters, landing in their nest. The boys made their way upstairs, going to their rooms and waiting for their carrier to say goodnight to them. Dorothy looked down at Toxin and nuzzled him a bit before looking up to the rafters. “Goodnight, girls. Make sure Ravage gets home alright.”

“We will, Carrier.” they answered back in unison as the mother walked upstairs with her youngest in her arms.

The little sparkling was already in recharge, his little winglets fluttering behind him as he was dreaming happily. Toxin was hugging the woman around the neck and slightly drooling on her shirt, but Dorothy didn’t mind. What she was more worried about was the fact that Cemetery Wind probably tracked any calls that Cade made and they would be on their way. The mother walked up the stairs and went to the twin’s room, pushing open the door and seeing that they were in their bunkbeds. “Hey, you two. I love you, no matter what stupid scrap you pull at school. Okay?”

“Carrier, are you okay?” Rumble asked, sitting up and looking at her. “You seem really nervous. Did something happen with Mr. Yeager?”

“Cade? No.” Dorothy replied, shaking her head and smiled. “I’m just having one of those nights where I’m thinking about Soundwave a lot. I miss him and you know, I wish he was here to help us.”

Rumble nodded, laying back down on his pillow and smiling at his carrier before pulling the covers over him to go to sleep. “G’night, mom.”

“Mom? Since when do you guys call me ‘mom’?” the woman questioned, but didn’t get a reply from her two sleeping boys. She smiled, tearing up a bit and quietly closed the door to the room. “Goodnight, my loveable little dorks.”

She leaned back against the door for a moment after closing the door. The only person to call her “mom” was Ravage, which was mostly a joke. She was happy her children were adjusting to being around humans and being human more times than not, but she didn’t believe “mom” was a very good word to describe herself. She was a carrier, not a “mom”. She could never be a mother to anything. In her mind, she was too aggressive and forcefully happy.

Dorothy took a moment to breathe a bit before going over to Ratbat’s room and kissing the small bat on the helm as she placed Toxin in his crib. The two youngest shared a room with Ravage, but since he wasn’t here at the moment, Dorothy was going to ask Starscream to come stay with them in his holo-avatar. “Goodnight, my little creature of the night.”

“Goodnight, Carri.” the little bat answered back as he hugged his Zubat plushie with his wings. “Uncle Star gonna do bedtime story?”

“Of course, sweetspark.” Dorothy reassured, sending a quick comm. message with her phone to the seeker in the hangar to come up to the house in his avatar. She knew Starscream would get to the house, which also gave her another means of protection for the kids if something where to happen during the night. She was planning on staying downstairs and watching over the house for the night, just in case someone showed up. Having the seeker in the house even in just his holo-avatar would be great help if someone broke in and she needed someone to fight with since Ravage wasn’t currently home.

While Ratbat waited for Starscream, Dorothy got Toxin ready for recharge. It was fairly simple tonight, since the little sparkling had spent most of his day running around the backyard with the resident giant cyber-panther. The little mech was very tired and only had time to grab his favorite T-Rex stuffie from the other side of his crib before completely passing out. The little weapons cassette sat with his older siblings and watched Jurassic Park on evening while Dorothy was out. Toxin seemed to like all the dinosaurs, but Rexy was his favorite. For his spark creation day, the mother had bought him a plush of the tyrannosaurus rex and Toxin had never lost it since. “Goodnight, sweetspark.” Dorothy cooed, kissing the little sparkling before pulling a blanket over him.

There was surprisingly no sound of heels from the stairwell when Starscream came up on his holo-avatar. The seeker walked in the room and yawned, stretching his arms out a bit as he was wearing a red sweatshirt with white sleeves. He was wearing some loose jeans as well, but that was really surprising was that he was wearing house slippers instead of his usually combat boots with an extra heel. His hair was a mess on his head, looking a lot more like Ravage usually did on a daily basis, but his brown eyes were a lot darker than the nearly adult panther’s was. Overall, Starscream looked really tired and like he was about to pass out on the bed he just sat down on. Dorothy felt bad for him and wished she still had some of Ratchet’s sleeping meds to give him.

“Wow, no heels tonight?” she joked a bit, gently leaning against the white crib behind her as she crossed her arms over her chest. “The memory fluxes must be getting really bad if you’re using your house wear attire tonight. Did you fall asleep after I gave you the energon earlier?”

The glare the seeker shot the woman standing next to her could kill. He looked like a moody teenager who didn’t want to go to school in the morning, but his mother dragged him out of bed anyways and made him get dressed. It was amusing, but soon the look was lost to the fact Starscream was getting attacked by the little bat in the room and he was genuinely having fun. Ratbat sat on the seeker’s lap as the two got comfortable sitting on the edge of the little mechling’s bed, giggling as the human avatar of the seeker gently rubbed his helm. “I heard someone waited a story tonight from the great Starscream himself, correct?”

Dorothy chuckled as the two settled into their little act and quietly snuck out of the room so they could have their moment. The first time the kids had seen Starscream again after Chicago, all of them had been hesitant to approach him. He had a new frame that looked completely different from his old one, since he was now a more rounded and blocky looking. His face looked more like what most Autobots had and his entire appearance seemed less threatening. He was still a F-16 fighter jet, but his pedes were his thrusters and his wings weren’t stuck to his back, giving them a larger range of motion to express his feelings. His old form had been designed by Megatron, explaining why when he was moved to his new frame, the seeker was much happier and lively than he had ever been.

The only one to get to know him first was Ratbat, unsurprisingly. Besides from Toxin, the little bat was the friendliest out of the siblings and was more accepting than the others. The mechling was the first to hug Starscream and spent the most time trying to help the seeker become more accustomed to his new look. The condors were next, followed by the twins and then Ravage. The panther had been the most suspicious of the seeker, never fully trusted him since the whole Ryder incident and was worried that Star would fly off again at a moment’s notice to go take over the Decepticons now that Megatron was officially dead. But no, the seeker stayed with Dorothy and became part of the family. He promised Soundwave he would take care of his creations and his mate before the communications officer left to go into hiding.

Thirty minutes when by before Starscream came downstairs and met Dorothy in the family room, which was on the other side of the kitchen and where the mother of the household did most of her reading. There was a kettle of hot water on the stove and the seeker took the initiative of getting a teabag out from one of the nearby boxes to put in a mug. He poured some hot water into said mug and walked into the family room on the couch, where the woman was reading a book and had her glasses on again. “Ratbat asleep?” she asked, not looking up from the book.

“Yes, he passed out halfway through my story.” the seeker answered back, twirling his teabag in the mug to let it brew a bit. He looked at the cover of the book and saw the title, _Cryptonomicon_ with a weird symbol on the front. “What’s this one about?”

“Mathematician is enlisted to break the Nazi code and his grandson runs a database network in the future. It’s good so far.” Dorothy replied, closing her book at the end of one chapter and placed it aside for the time being. “I got a call from Cade today.”

“Yeager? The inventor whose daughter Ravage has a crush on?” Starscream questioned, taking a careful sip of his hot tea. He had to remind himself that his holo-avatar was very fragile and his sensors were oversensitive. “Does he need you to pay for his electricity bill again? I swear Dorothy, you shouldn’t be wasting your money on him.”

“Hey, I’m not wasting my money on him.” the woman responded defensively. She calmed herself from yelling too loudly, knowing that she would wake the kids that way. “Anyways, that’s not the point of the conversation. I need you to stay in Ratbat and Toxin’s room tonight while I deal with the possibility that some unwanted guests are stopping by tonight that aren’t cybertronian.”

Starscream groaned a bit, but soon quieted under a small side glare the woman sent him. The seeker really didn’t want to sleeping with the little ones, knowing that if Toxin woke up in the middle of the night, he would never go back to sleep. Usually whenever Dorothy said ‘unwanted guests’, she meant that either the government or Cemetery Wing found out about their residency. They have moved a couple of times before this, this move being the longest of two years, but Dorothy wanted to make this move permanent. The woman was always worried about when the government would show up and try to take her kids or herself away, meaning she was always very high-strung and tense. He nodded finally, agreeing with her order. “I’ll try my best. Should I start packing the kids’ stuff?”

“Not unless our cover is blown.” Dorothy replied, still watching the driveway for anything. She just hoped Ravage got back soon so she knew all of her kids were safe. Everything seemed a little too calm tonight when there was a large thud from upstairs about the two adults’ heads. Frenzy and Rumble’s room was above the family room and they both froze, listening for anything else before realizing that there were tiny footsteps following the thud. Did one of the boys have a nightmare? It wasn’t uncommon, especially for Frenzy, but something seemed off. “Stay here and wait for me to call for you. Something’s not right.”

Dorothy didn’t even look back at Starscream to know that he understood the situation. The seeker stood up and leaned against the wall backing the kitchen as the mother walked through the opening and carefully poured herself some coffee she made earlier in the evening. She listened to the footsteps, too slow to be her kids and there was no screaming for her yet like Frenzy usually did after nightmares. She didn’t recognize a second set of footsteps either, so she became worried at one of her kids had gotten hurt somehow. She quickly grabbed the small dagger from under the kitchen sink before walking into the living room and sitting down in one of the chairs.

“Carrier?” The voice was Frenzy’s, like she expected. He sounded terrified, like he had a nightmare, but there was a shaking in his voice. Usually he would have ran down the stairs checking to see if she was there, but Dorothy could only hear him from the stairs and not see him. “A-Are you there?”

“Yes, Frenzy. Are you alright, sweetspark?” Play it off. Dorothy knew something wasn’t right with her child, but she had to play it off to keep whoever was upstairs with him from attacking. She looked over at the stairs to see that Frenzy had come down to the small platform between the lower and top level of stairs. He was fidgeting with his digits and looked like he was about to cry, which was upsetting for Dorothy as a carrier to the mechling. “You have another nightmare?”

The red and black cassette nodded, rubbing the side of his arm as he looked up the stairs for a moment. He was scared of something upstairs, but the little creation hadn’t said anything else since he came down the stairs. “I-I had a dream where you and Sire were g-gone and you left us.” he muttered a bit, looking down at his pedes and starting to curl up on himself.

“Oh, sweetspark. You know Soundwave and I would never leave you all alone like that. We’re family, and no one gets left behind.” the woman replied, getting up from her chair and walking over to the bottom of the stairs, warmly smiling at her child. “Why don’t you come downstairs and we can talk about it? I’ll get you some warm energon before you go back to bed.”

The lone twin nodded frantically and sprinted down the lower flight of stairs into his carrier’s arms, shaking and crying into her shoulder with his arms around her neck. Dorothy smiled, walking away from the stairs and rubbing his back, not facing the stairs. She walked over to where the couch was and kissed Frenzy’s cheek, nuzzling him slightly as she slowly reached for the dagger under her shirt as she could faintly her a second pair of footsteps behind her. She could feel her creation tense on her shoulder, whimpering a bit. “C-Carrier…” he whined, hiding his face in his caretaker’s shoulder again.

“I know, honey. I know.” she replied, feeling the presence of something directly behind her and the sound of blaster humming to life. She didn’t move for a few seconds before she quickly jabbed her free arm back to elbow the person in the face and stabbed the dagger into the upper leg of the attacker. The person behind her yelped and groaned, falling backwards before catching themselves on their feet. Dorothy quickly grabbed the dagger out of the man’s leg as he was falling and knocked him out with the wooden handle across the head. The man’s head collided with the hard wooden floor and he was out, leaving the woman and her son standing in the living room alone. She exhaled the long breathe she was holding and placed Frenzy on the floor for a moment. “Primus, are you okay, sweetspark? Did he hurt you?”

“No, Carrier. I’m okay. I-I promise.” the lone twin stated, hugging his mother still and resisting the thought of letting go. He was still shaken from being woken up and forced to distract Dorothy so that the man could attempt to kill her. Frenzy was shaking and trying to get the woman to pick him back up, but she was more focused on listening for more footsteps upstairs or anywhere around the house. “Is he dead?”

“No, not yet, but hopefully the rest of his friends decide to get him before the night is up.” the mother replied, picking up her child and rushing around to grab some stuff from the living room. Dorothy wasn’t panicking, no she couldn’t afford to panic with her children’s lives on the line. She started to grab all the emergency bags from around the room and started to organize everything. She jumped up and hit one of the wooden planks above her head, shaking the rafters. “Girls, wake up! Code Black!”

The two condor cassettes in the rafters were immediately awake and started collecting their things from their nesting area, knowing to leave their phones behind and other devices that could be tracked. They stored stuff in their subspaces before flying out and heading up the stairs to collect their siblings and their stuff. Laserbeak also was comming Ravage to come back to the house under Code Black, making sure that their older brother was there to pick them up from the house. Buzzsaw went into the younger twin’s room and saw that the window was broken inwards, now knowing where the unconscious soldier form downstairs had gotten in. The dull golden plated condor shook her brother awake and passed along the message to start packing while the muted red plated condor was across the hall waking up Ratbat and Toxin.

Starscream rushed in from the other room and froze in the doorframe of the kitchen, cursing to himself as he saw the unconscious man on the floor and started to help the woman pack. “That escalated quickly, didn’t it?” the seeker quipped while taking Frenzy from the woman and placing him on the couch as she finished packing up the last emergency bag. “What do you want me to do, Dorothy? I’m still recovering from the last time I flew, which ended up with me crashing and my legs getting messed up.”

“Stay in the hangar then.” the mother replied, placing her bag by the front door and looking up the stairs. “Laserbeak, what’s Ravage’s ETA?!”

“Ten minutes!” the oldest femme yelled back down as she continued to help Ratbat pack up his stuff before the two started to get Toxin all ready to go.

“Thank you!” Dorothy replied, watching Buzzsaw fly down the stairs with Rumble in her talons and dropped him off on the couch with Frenzy. The woman turned back to Starscream, who was had gone down to the basement to get some energon for Toxin. “As I said, stay in the hangar. You safer there under the shield than trying to follow us while Cemetery is coming after us. Soundwave and Ratchet engineered it to cloak a cybertronian’s life force from human and cybertronian tech. The shield should fit over you in your alt-mode and keep you hidden from sight if CW comes to search the house. I’ll contact you when I need you, or when we find a new place to hide out.”

The seeker nodding, turning to help Buzzsaw get Toxin down the stairs as Ratbat flew down himself. The little sparkling was tearing up a bit, not knowing why he had to wake up from his recharge so early and started to hiccup and whimpered. The bat flew down with a little sac hanging from his back and tied it to Dorothy’s bag before transforming into a laptop and sliding into the woman’s bag himself. Dorothy grabbed the energon container and placed it in in her extra bag while taking the black and green sparkling from the condor. She started to calm him down, bouncing him a bit and getting him to transform into an assault rifle after he fell back into recharge. “Dorothy, I’m taking the rest of the energon and oil and hiding in it the hangar with me. I’ll be fine. I’ve survived worse.” the mech yelled up from the basement.

“I know, Star.” the woman yelled back and heard a motocycle a short distance away from the house, but also heard ATVs as well. The seeker came back up the stairs quickly and hugged the woman, both holding each other for a few moments before letting go. The holo-avatar of the ex-SIC had tear trails down its face and Dorothy smiled warmly before kissing his forehead. “Be safe, you crazy jet. Don’t make me have to fix you again.”

“No promises.” Starscream responded sadly before his avatar disappeared, his consciousness going back to his frame back in the airplane hangar out in the meadow.

Dorothy chuckled as she motioned for the kids to head outside the house. “That’s my line.” she scolded to no one as she headed outside to see a motorcycle with a young driver sped up the hill and pull up in the front of the house. Frenzy and Rumble instantly transformed into their respective CD players alt forms and dropped into the two back compartments of the shiny black motorcycle while the two condors transformed into their respective air drone forms and hovered above. Dorothy quickly attached Toxin to the weapon holder on the side of the bike and let the avatar sitting in the seat disappear before she hopped on. “Dorothy, we have ATV coming up the hill. How the heck did they find us?”

“Cade called me.” Dorothy responded, forcefully revving Ravage’s engine and getting the bike to start up down around the backside of the house to where the mapped out escape route was. “Optimus is alive and the Autobots are converging somewhere in the desert outside of Texas, I’m thinking Arizona. I didn’t think I’d be going back to my home state so soon, but once we get far enough from the house and Cemetery, you can activate the tracker for Bee and see where he’s at.”

The two black ATVs popped up over the hillside where the house was and started to chase the bike through the forest towards the main room, a black Lamborghini not too far behind. The woman cursed again, which she seemed to be doing a lot of tonight, but see didn’t care as she unhooked Toxin from the side of the bike and aimed it back at one of the ATVs. She felt the Allspark fragment release some energy before a giant shot escaped from the end of the assault rifle’s barrel and dented in the front end of one of the vehicles chasing the family. Dorothy smiled a bit and took aim at the other, waiting for it to align before shooting again and blowing the engine of that vehicle.

That only left the Lambo following Dorothy as they came up on the military fence that surrounded the property, but it now had a wooden ramp a few meters in front of it. The mother clipped the gun to the side of the bike again and revved up the engine of the bike before powering through the ramp, inching it over the fence’s barbed wire and landing hard on the other side. The black sports car skidded to a stop just before the fence as it watched the woman sped off towards the highway, engine growling in response to her getting away. All of the vehicles from Cemetery stopped as well, watching the woman as she got away from them for the third time in the last five years.

One of the ATVs’ doors opened, a man with shades walking out as the black Lamborghini transformed into a tall mech, kneeling down to look off in the direction Dorothy had went. “Why aren’t we going after her?!” the man screamed, looking at the cybertronian for an answer. “If you haven’t noticed, she’s still got that stupid fragment and those cons with her!”

 “You humans are so stupid sometimes, you know that Savoy?” the mech pointed out, smirking to himself. “She wants us to follow her. You saw the weapon she was handling. If she got us cornered, which I have no doubt that she will, she could probably murder all of you in an instant and I could get seriously hurt myself. So how about you stop standing there like an idiot and try to find out where she’s headed, because she aren’t finding her any faster by standing her like little ducks.”

The man nodded and hurried back into the car, sending the command to head back to the house to start searching for information on where they might be headed. The black cybertronian smiled to himself, chuckling as he looked out to the highway and tried to imagine the woman and her alien children on the run. “The chase has begun, Mrs. Haven. First you, then your children, and then Soundwave. Run as fast as you can.”


	3. Chapter 3

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Dorothy catches up with everyone else and she is not happy.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sorry I've been gone. Hope you enjoy!

For Cade Yeager, a lot of things had happened over the last two days. The truck he bought happened to be a Transformer, he lost his house, and now he had to deal with the fact that Tessa was a mess since Lucas and her unofficial boyfriend died in an explosion. He never liked him anyways.

Tessa was currently sitting with Bumblebee, who was trying his best to console her on losing Shane, but it didn’t seem to be working. The scout was just sitting there, lightly patting her back and wrapping a blanket around her. He understood what it was like to lose someone he cared about, since he was still upset about not being able to find Barricade. He wasn’t going to say anything to the rest of the Autobots about it, except for Prime who knew about it already, but he hadn’t exactly told Crosshairs, Hound and Drift about his relationship with the ex-con yet. Heck, they didn’t even know about Dorothy yet, but that was probably gonna change soon.

Sooner or later, the crying girl fell asleep and Bee was finally about to relax some. Cade could see it all over his face, since the scout gave a loud whirled sigh after he had walked away from his daughter and came to sit with him by the makeshift fire they made earlier. Drift was back to sharpening his katanas after he and Bumblebee started fighting, Crosshairs was leaning back against a rock structure behind him and Hound was doing a weapons check of his entire inventory. Optimus was on a short patrol around the area, but wasn’t too far away if something were to happen. The father kept looking down at his phone, expecting someone to call back and tell him he and his daughter were gonna be okay.

“So who’s this ‘Dorothy’ person, Bee?” Crosshairs asked, shifting his position to learn forward and rest his elbow joints on his knees. “Why do you and Prime keep talkin’ about ‘er?”

:: _She’s an old friend and really nice._ :: Bee replied back, glaring in the paratrooper’s direction. :: _Dorothy used to work with us back when the Autobots were sanctioned by the U.S. government. I don’t know where she is now, but we are kinda hoping that she shows up at some point. She has a habit of doing that a lot_ ::

“Sounds like a bunch of scrap metal to me.” the green trench-coated mech replied, picking something out of his denta with his pinkie digit. “I mean, these little buggers are about the size of your servo. How in the name of Cybertron did she keep up with you all? She drive with you.”

:: _No, she has a bike and that only thing I can say about how she does the things she does is… magic…_ :: Bee lied a bit. The scout knew he wasn’t allowed to tell anyone what happened, since that was Dorothy’s private business and not his. If Crosshairs wanted to know, he would have to ask her when she got here. Yes, there is no “if” this time. Bumblebee knew she was going to be here this time because Optimus sent out the message over the Autobot comm system, so she must have heard it by now.

“Magic?!” Crosshairs replied, shooting up from his seat a bit and fell back with laughter, clutching his stomach. “You mechlings gotta start digging’ your helms out of your afts! There ain’t such a thing as magic!”

“Do not judge someone you have never met, Crosshairs.” Drift spoke up, waving his sword at the green and black mech as a method of scolding him. “I am sure you will grow to like her once you meet her, if you meet her that is.”

:: _Don’t worry. She’s gonna be here, Drift._ :: the yellow and black scout replied. :: _I know so. I can feel it in my spark… for reasons._ ::

“Whoa, whoa, whoa, hold on guys!” Cade called out, having listened to their conversation and realized something really important to his own well-being in the near future. “Are we talking about Dorothy Haven? Like, Dorothy ‘I’ve got seven kids and if you mess with me, I’m stabbing you with a pen’ Haven?”

Bee’s optics widened and he nodded happily, leaning down to listen more to their new human friend. :: _Yep, that’s her._ ::

Crosshairs laughed again. “Seven kids? Man, she got busy with her sparkmate.”

:: _Crosshairs, shut up before I make you._ :: Bumblebee threatened before turning back to Cade. :: _As you were saying, Cade? Do you know her?_ ::

“Yeah, I do. I happened to have called her…” the man replied, scratching the back of his head nervously. “And from what I could gather, she was not too happy about our situation because she didn’t question anything I told her… and then hung up.”

Bumblebee stared at Cade and then at the ground in front of his pedes. :: _Okay, we’re so screwed._ ::

Hound perked up at the statement and raised a grapping gun up in the air. “Why do ya say that that, Bee? You need me to shoot someone?”

:: _No! That will just make it worse!_ :: the scout exclaimed as he started to freak out a bit. :: _We are not shooting the woman that we actually need alive right now!_ ::

The sound of a motorcycle broke through the empty desert and both Cade and Bee’s heads snapped towards it. The thing was, they couldn’t see the bike. They could only hear it and that was a hundred percent scarier than being able to see what was coming their way. Everyone else at camp had picked up on the sound as well and activated some sort of weapons and waited for the sound to come to a stop. The motorcycle’s sound altered from an engine rumble to more of an animalistic growl at some point and everyone started to get the unnerving feeling that the human and the scout were onto something. That’s when the sound stopped and Cade was on the end of bolting for the nearest rock structure.

“CADE YEAGER, YOU PIECE OF SCRAP!” A blaster shot blaster through the darkness in front of the man and exploded at his feet, making him yelp and jump back. Cade watched in somewhat fear as a woman walked towards him with her helmet in one hand and her charged up assault rifle in the other. She dropped her helmet and seized the inventor by the shirt collar, tugging him back towards her and glaring at him point-blank in the face. “I have been driving for 5 hours just to find your sorry aft because of you making that stupid phone call! Do you know what could have happened if I wasn’t train for this?! The kids could have been taken away from me, I could have been in jail by now and… and… I can’t even speak anymore I’m so pissed off at you!”

Dorothy let go of the man’s shirt, making him drop a bit to the ground holding him up a bit and turned around to mutter and curse to herself for a few minutes. Cade didn’t dare more and neither did anyone else, just waiting to see if she was try and shoot the man again. Instead, she just fell to the ground and started crying into her hands silently. She made a loud shaky sigh and just sat on her knees and sobbed silently, her anger gone and sadness taking its place. She had been so stressed from trying to protect the kids and herself that her damns just broke up from all the pressure of being a mother. The woman wasn’t okay in the slightly sense of the word.

Luckily, Bumblebee knew what to do having experienced the mother of seven completely crashing from high levels of motherly stress before. He walked over to her and picked her up into his servos, gently holding her and walking back over to the rock he had been sitting on. :: _It’s okay, Dorothy. The kids are okay, right? They’re safe and everyone’s accounted for?_ ::

The woman looked up from her hands and gently wiped away the extra tears falling, nodding and smiling to the scout. “Yeah, Bee. I’ve got everyone. Thank you, sweetheart. I’m sorry I broke like that, but a lot of stuff has happened this week, not to mention Cemetery Wind came to my house and we literally had to evacuate already. Good to see you again, kiddo.”

:: _Good to see you, too._ :: Bee replied and chuckled lightly, it coming out as a couple of strung together buzzes from his vocoder. :: _So, where are the kids?_ ::

“Oh, frag! That’s why I forgot!” she replied, standing up to quickly kiss the top of the scout’s forehelm before getting down from his servos. She ran to pick up her assault rifle and tapped it twice, it transforming into a tiny sparkling and clinging to Dorothy’s front, half awake. “Ravage, turn on your headlights for Primus’s sake!”

“I am! Give me a second to at least drive over!” the motorcycle called back, slowly trucking his way over to the campsite and then turning on the lights to a lower degree. The motorcycle transformed instantly, forgetting he had passengers still on him and they all became scattered on the desert ground. The cybertronian panther stretched out quickly before sitting down in the spot he transformed in. Everyone else transformed and woke up, groaning and whimpering about how it was one in the morning and they wanted to sleep more.

The three Autobots that had no idea what the heck was going on just watched in silence as the seven extra cybertronians came out of nowhere. Before anyone could get a word out, Drift shot up in a defensive stance with his swords out at the seven cassettes. “Decepticons!” he shouted and Crosshairs and Hound stood up with weapons of their own. “State your purpose of being here!”

Everyone was really calm about this, besides Cade who was silently thinking that there was going to be an all-out war between the seven transformers that just appeared and the Autobots. Frenzy and Rumble looked at each other before laughing out loud, hard. Ratbat joined them and the rest of the kids just face palmed. Dorothy was more focused on Toxin at the moment and he was chirping and squealing with excitement, bouncing in his carrier’s arms. It took a minute for the twins to stop flailing around on the ground to sit back up and smiled. “Wow, are these guys new or what?” Frenzy asked, before his facing going a bit more serious. “No, I really mean it. Are they new, Bee?”

:: _Yep. Came around during the five years you guys were in hiding._ :: the scout answered, smiling under his vocoder before waving off the others. He turned around and glared a bit. :: _That’s Dorothy and her kids, guys. They’re good, don’t worry… I hope._ ::

“So you mean you’re telling me that the woman you were talkin’ about before was a human female was major emotional issues and is the mother of seven of the most dangerous Decepticons on this planet?” Crosshairs asked, quirking a brow and staring in disbelief. “What’s next? She’s dating Soundwave and Starscream’s their uncle?” The paratrooper was laughing at his joke, but none of the kids or Dorothy were. He stopped, growled and threw his hands up in the air to show defeat at this point.

“Sparkbonded, actually, but close.” the woman admitted, raising her left hand to show a ring on her ring finger. The kids started laughing and Dorothy did as well, bringing her hand back down and holding it, silently thinking about her mate a bit with a small frown. Toxin looked up at her and patted her face, making her snap out of her thoughts and smiled down at him. “And little Toxin right here is not mine or Soundwave’s. He’s adopted.”

“No, wait. Stop, Dorothy!” Cade yelled, seeming very frustrated and tired at the same time. The woman guessed he probably had a long two days, since he had learnt of an alien race living in his barn and running from the government. “Your children are human! I’ve seen them! Ryan, Fred, Ron, Betty, Laura, and Robin! I’ve never seen Taylor, but they are-were all human, I don’t know… what the heck is going on here?”

Dorothy sighed, chuckling to herself and patting the inventor on the shoulder. “I’ll explain it to you later, Cade, I promise. Right now, I have to wait up for Optimus so I can yell at his aft too. Bee, can you take Toxin and help him recharge? He’s pretty tired and once he has his stuffie, he’ll be okay.” The woman walked forward and placed the tiny sparkling in the scout’s servos and going off to start unpacking her stuff from her backpack. She pulled out the weapons cassette’s stuffed T-Rex and handed it to the sparkling before going back to unpacking a few things.

Ravage, on the other paw, was staring at Tessa, who had recently just woken up from hearing all the commotion. Frenzy and Rumble were watching him, their line of sight moving between their older brother and his friend from school. The biggest smirk appeared on both of their faces and they walked around to stand in front of the dreamy-opticed panther. It was their sire’s story all over again. “Hey, Rav.” Frenzy called up, trying to catch his attention.

“Yeah?” the cat replied, not even looking at them and his long tail wagging happily behind him. The two twins chuckled a bit, realizing that this cat looked like a love-struck puppy dog.

“You have a crush on Tessa, don’t you?” Rumble asked, quirking his brow from under his red visor and crossing his arms over his chestplates. His twin mimicked his stance.

“Ye-No! No, I don’t!” Ravage quickly snapped out of his stupor and looked down at his siblings. He glared at them and growled under his vents. “What in the name of Primus gave you that idea?”

“Well for starters, you’re looking at Tessa like Sire did when he first saw Carrier.” Frenzy replied, holding up his fingers to count. “Two, everyone in the family knows that you have a crush on her. Even Uncle Star knows and he was in the hangar for most of the time. And three, Ratbat has told us both that you talk about her in your recharge and that’s just creepy. Dare I go on?”

The panther narrowed his blazing red optics even further and groaned, bringing a paw to his face. Why did his brothers torture him so? More importantly, why do his siblings hate him so much? “Okay, okay, yes. I have a small interest in Tessa, but why does that matter to you?”

“Oh nothing.” Rumble continued where his twin left off. “Just that because you’re in your root form and not in your holo-avatar, what will she think of you now?”

The panther was scowling at them until that point and paled visibly. He looked back over at the teenager girl to see that she was looking weirdly at Dorothy, probably wondering why she’s here. He growled again, mentally berating himself for not thinking about that and looked down to see that the twins were gone. He jumped back again, back arched a bit and plating flaring out, but settled and looked back to Tessa. He sat on his haunches, rubbed his muzzle with his paws and walked over to the teenager. He sat down behind her a ways and cleared his vocal box. “Hi, Tessa.” he said, voice shaking and cracking all over the place.

The teenager girl spun around and screamed, making Ravage cringe and fold his audial receptors back. She picked up a stick from the fire and waved it at him, trying to get him to leave her alone. Apparently, she didn’t like big giant black cats creeping up behind her and the cybertronian panther did the correct thing and slowly backed away every time she stepped forwards. “Go away, Decepti-whatever!” she yelled, throwing the stick at him.

The stick hit off his plating, not even making a dent, but wincing from the words that come out of her mouth. He could hear cackling from over by Dorothy to see Frenzy and Rumble laughing their afts off at him, which also made him a little pissed. “Ow, that’s hurt my spark. Tess, come on. I’m not that scary, am I? I didn’t mean to scare you, but you’re so small now and I really big now. Can’t we just talk?”

“How do you know who I am?!” she yelled back, going back towards the fire to grab another stick, but Ravage walked around her and sat in front of her path.

“I know you because we literally spend most of our lunch period trying to rig the vending machine to give us free candy.” the cat replied, digging his paw into the ground and messing with the sand. “I take you on bike rides when your other friends can’t drop you off. For Primus’s sake, I even picked you up really early in the morning so we could go get coffee before school and you wouldn’t stop making found of my hair.”

It took the teenager a moment before see putt everything together. “…Robin? Is that you? Oh my god, what have they done to you? Did those Cemetery guys turn you into a Transformer?”

“A what?” Ravage asked, wondering what a “transformer” is. “Oh, you mean cybertronian! No, I’ve always been one. Actually, I am the motorcycle, but this is what I normally look like.”

“But you were human though. I could hug you and touch you and you didn’t look like this.” Tessa complained, using her hands to gesture to all of him.

The panther chuckled, laying down in front of her and spreading his back legs out. He thought Tessa completely confused was utterly adorable and he just started answering some of her questions. Frenzy and Rumble were now a little bummed out that the teen didn’t keep throwing sticks at him and went off to go pester Hound about guns and other stuff. Ratbat was currently napping onto of Crosshairs’ helm without him noticing and Toxin was already asleep in Bee’s arms.

Dorothy had finished unpacking by the time that a horn sounded in the distance and she groaned verbally. She didn’t really want to be dealing with Optimus right now, but she probably had to. She stood up from her backpack and looked back to see the big rig pull up to camp, transforming to stand in front of her. “Hey, Prime. How long has it been? Four years and six months now?”

“What are you doing here, Dorothy? I thought you were in hiding with your family.” the Prime asked, tilting his helm and kneeling down to talk to her.

The woman crossed her arms in front of her chest, popped her hip out a bit and quirked a brow. “I was, until someone broke cover and decided to let the human he happened to pick up call me. Cemetery came to my place and I had to evac. Now, you and I need to come up with a battle plan before Primus comes for both of our afts. So, what do we have to work with besides a snark, a war dog, and a warrior from the time of emperors, Prime?”


	4. Chapter 4

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Bee misses Barricade, but Starscream doesn't miss Lockdown.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hope you enjoy!

Harold Attinger was a very busy man and the only thing that could tick him off more than usual was when he was pulled away from said work. But this time was an exception because of how his ally seemed to want him front and center for this interrogation.

The CIA agent was driven onto the plot of land that seemed to be labeled as a military base and saw how the giant fence around the perimeter of the base was old and rusty. No one has been on this land for years, yet Lockdown seemed to want him here. Frankly, the man still hated these cybertronians and their existence, but any step closer to getting his end of the bargain was worth it. When his escort vehicle finally reached the top of the hill, there was a house here with an old family van parked in the driveway. The agent got out of the car when the door opened for him and was face to face with Savoy.

“What happened?” the older man asked, walking towards the house and wondering why he was wasting his time here. “I thought I was called for an interrogation, not a house party.”

“Your accomplice wanted you to check out the house first, just to see what we’re dealing with.” the other angel pointed out as they entered the house. The house was mostly destroyed by the Cemetery Wind agents searching through it and trying to find some kind of evidence. Some of the men were bringing up small samples of energon from the basement and others were just looking through drawers for personal information on the owner of the house. Of course, they didn’t find anything on paper anywhere in the house, since it wasn’t at the house at all. Everything concerning the owners seemed to have vanished except for everything in the children’s rooms upstairs. “What do you know about Dorothy Haven?”

That name did ring a bell for the older agent. “She worked with N.E.S.T., but retired after Chicago. She went completely off the map five years ago and no one as seen her since. It was said she had existing ties to both Decepticons and Autobots, but with no one able to locate her, we couldn’t get any information. Well, until now, it seems. She has hiding here for the last five years?”

“No, last two.” Savoy replied, handing Attinger a file of moving records. “To add onto that, she was hiding with seven Decepticons and one Autobots. It seemed that she went off the map with them and nothing resurfaced until our friend, Mr. Yeager made a call to her phone last night. We tracked the call, but got here a little too late. Our scout was stabbed in the leg and Mrs. Haven had escaped the property. Sadly, she didn’t leave any evidence of where she was going but someone else was left behind.”

The agent nodded as he looked out the back door to see that the all black bounty hunter was walking up the hill of the back of the house. Attinger walked out the back of the house and stood on the small porch as the mech walked up and over to him. Lockdown seemed very happy at the moment, stopping a few feet from the man and leaning down to meet his eye level. “I didn’t think you would come, Attinger. I thought you hated stepping out of the office for dirty work.” the bounty hunter taunted lightly.

“What did you find? I haven’t got all day for this, Lockdown.” the man replied sternly as he made his point.

The mech groaned, waving for him to follow as he walked back down the hill. “You humans. Always so pushy.” he seethed before making his way back from where he came. They and a few soldiers walked through the more developed part of the military base to find that there were actual hangars and rotted away jets sitting around the plot of unused land. It seemed like the people who were designing the base either lost the money to finish building it, or they abandoned it after some time because of its under usage. The house must have been built there after or by Mrs. Haven herself. The building they were heading too way an old rusted over jet hangar with vines and plants covering it from the amount of trees and vegetation behind it. The main door for the jets had been rusted shut, but Lockdown managed to get it open with his tools. “I wanted you to see what Mrs. Haven had been hiding in her closet under our noises.” Lockdown replied before pushing open the door.

When the door was opened, there was one of the most infamous Decepticons known in the Cemetery Wind’s database was kneeling right there with his servos and thrusters tied together and arms tied up into the air above his helm. His wings had been hooked through and suspended outwards to make the seeker look like he was an angel statue of some sort, but the sound of electricity was in the air from inside the hangar was loud enough to drone out the groaning and wheezing the restraint mech was making. “What is he still doing here? I thought I told you that if you found any transformers with my men, to ship them to KSI.” Attinger asked, not mad but curious.

“Mrs. Haven had to have him here for some reason, right?” Lockdown replied, walking into the hangar and taking a knee in front of the wounded seeker. He tapped the seeker on his forehelm to get his systems to reboot and watched as the red, white and blue jet startled awake again and instantly tried to struggle away from the position he was in. “Wakey wakey, Starscream. You seem to be in a lot of distress, but that should be the least of your worries at the moment.”

“Get away from me, fragger!” Starscream spat, trying hard to pull his servos out of the restraining cables around them so he could just sock the bounty hunter in the face. “Don’t touch me!”

The all black mech made a face of mocked pain. He smirked at the jet as he tilted the seeker’s helm up to look at his, telling anyone that he wasn’t planning on being sympathetic to the smaller mech. “Aw, Star. Words hurt. After all I’ve done for you in the past and everything we’ve been together, you still don’t appreciate me? I though you liked it when I touched you~ You remember those nights, don’t you my little seeker~?”

Something metal cracked and Lockdown immediately pulled away. He looked down to see that the seeker had bit down on his digit when he was going to move it away, energon leaking from it. He looked up at Starscream to see him baring his fanged denta and small drops of energon on them. “I am not anyone’s ‘little seeker’!” the seeker growled with a feral tone. “You have abused me and left me on so many planets to rot on that I’ve lost track that this point, you… you son of a glitch! You were worse than _he_ ever was!”

Lockdown didn’t waste any time flipping up one of the panels on his forearm and pressing one of the buttons, activating the restrain cables around Starscream’s arms and legs to send a high voltage shock through the plating. The seeker lived up to his name and screamed to the heavens as electricity surged through the cabling under his plating and made his ventilation systems reboot. After five seconds, the current stopped and Starscream was able take a deep breathe in. The seeker’s face was grabbed by Lockdown and tugged up to his height. “I thought I could do this the easy way with you, but apparently not! You’re just a pathetic piece of shareware and if you want to live past today, you will tell me where Dorothy Haven and her little kiddies are heading before I make your condition worse!”

“Never! They are my family! You will never be anything compared to them!” the seeker yelled back before swinging his pedes forward and kicking them into the bounty hunter’s midsection. The mech let go of him and Starscream fell to the floor, quickly trying to configure his null rays to shoot off the restraints on his wings first before aiming for the ones on his wrists. With two shots, he was free and working on getting the restraints off of his legs before Lockdown got back up.

He saw the bounty hunter got up from the floor and rushed over, seizing the seeker by the wrists and pinning him to a nearby wall. “You thought you could run from me, you little rat! I will always be able to find my targets, especially you. Before we continue with the questions, maybe I should teach you a little lesson first~” Lockdown activated his hooked blade and traced it up the seeker’s midsections until it was right under his chestplates. He leaned forwards and got incredibly close to the smaller mech’s face before he felt a heeled pede stomp down on his.

The seeker didn’t waste any time jabbing the bounty hunter in his neck with his elbow and making a run for the hangar door. Starscream was officially panicking and he was also losing some energon, which was never a good thing. Of course, he had some in his subspace but that was it. He was careful not to step on any of the humans as he exited the hangar and transformed instantly, blasting off in the same direction he knew that Dorothy had went to go meet up with Cade in the others. He looked back to see the Lockdown was shooting after him and freaked, pushing himself to fly away faster.

Now, Attinger wasn’t very happy with this turn of events. “That was a failed excuse of an interrogation. You’re just going to let him get away?”

“You humans and your problems with being inpatient.” the black mech replied hoarsely, stepping back over and rubbing at the dent in midsection and limping a bit. “The thrill of the hunt is letting the prey think they got away. I know where he’s heading, not by tracker, but just on a hunch. We should start making our way back to Chicago. We’ll be getting some visitors and I will have Starscream to myself again.”

✢✢✢✢✢✢

Toxin woke up the next morning to see that he wasn’t in his mother’s arms, but in Bumblebee’s. Of course, the little sparkling didn’t care who he was held by, since he seemed to love everyone unconditionally and didn’t care. But on occasion, the little weapons cassette seemed to preference being held by his cousin Bee, his cousin Barricade and his carrier more than anything else.

The little black and neon green sparkling looked around to see that his big brother and his human friend from school were sitting on the opposite part of the dead campfire and that his other siblings were scattered around the camp. His carrier was sleeping on Bee’s lower leg while Mr. Yeager had snuck over to sleep on Optimus’s shoulder. Frenzy and Rumble had snuck over to Hound’s setup and fell asleep in his soldier’s hat where Ratbat was still sleeping on top of Crosshairs’s helm. As for the condor twins, they were watching over the camp being that they got up really early in the morning. So, only the girls and Toxin were up at the moment.

The next to wake up was Bumblebee, being that he felt the little sparkling shifting in his arms and he was a very light sleeper when he needed to be. The scout opened his optics and chuckled at the little one’s antics. Toxin was currently trying to attack the yellow and black Autobot with his favorite T-Rex stuffie, but it didn’t really do anything. :: _Good morning, Toxin. What are you doing?_ :: Bee asked, using his digit to rub the little sparkling’s helm.

“Attac!” Toxin replied as if he was a warrior and started to climb on the scout’s plating to pat at his face. Of course, Toxin didn’t really want to hurt his cousin since he was just playing and his tiny servos patting his older bot’s face didn’t do any damage, but the scout played along. He gently removed his leg from under Dorothy’s body before falling over in defeat. The tiny sparkling giggled and grabbed his plush before sitting in front of Bee’s face. “I win!”

:: _You have defeated me, oh great warrior!_ :: the scout replied, playing along with Toxin before reaching forward and scooping him up again. He gently ticked the little one’s tummy and made the cassette burst out in laughter, causing Bee to smile happily. He sighed, looking down and smiling at himself. Over the last few years, he had always imagined that he and Barricade could officially be together after the war. They almost made it officially too, but then the government started to chase after them and they both had to run. Barricade went one way and he went the other, knowing that they might never see each other again. He knew, in his spark, that the ex-con wasn’t dead, but he was never sure. :: _What I would give to have a sparkling like you, Toxin…_ ::

“Bee, you okay?” The scout jumped, looking up and seeing that Dorothy had woken up and seemed mildly concerned. “You’re crying, bud.”

:: _I-I am?_ :: Bumblebee asked with a broken voice, touching his face subconsciously to find that he was leaking coolant from his optics. He quietly cursed at himself before frantically wiping away the coolant before handing Toxin down to the woman, making sure that his T-Rex plushie was with him. :: _…I’m fine._ ::

“That’s a bunch of scrap. You are clearly not.” the mother of the sparkling replied instantly, placing Toxin down on a blanket before handing him a sippy cup full of energon. The woman then walked over and sat next to the crying scout, hopping up on a log as she walked her child eat. The two condors swooped down after a while and sat with Toxin to make sure he would be safe, like good sister do. “Now, would you like to talk about the obvious elephant in the room? What’s been killing you, kid?”

:: _…I miss ‘Cade._ :: the scout responded hesitantly, servos fidgeting and digits intertwining with each other. :: _I miss him so much. I don’t get why he had to leave me when we all went into hiding. Why did he have to leave, Dorothy? Why didn’t he come with us?_ ::

“He was trying to protect you, Bee. Just like how Soundwave was trying to protect the kids and I, he left and went a separate ways.” the woman replied, watching as the other kids woke up and came over to eat with the others. “They are looking for Decepticons, but Cemetery doesn’t care who they kill. They would kill the kids if they were captured and both Soundwave and I decided that we would rather lose one of us then lose one of the kids. So we went our separate ways to keep the government busy and I took the kids with me. Barricade may not be a Decepticon anymore, but he is still seen as one. He doesn’t want you to be hurt.”

The scout nodded and wiped away a few more tears of coolant. :: _I wish he was here, Dorothy. I miss snuggling and recharging him with. He was so careful with me, even if he was still a Decepticon by profile. We really didn’t care about the war, since we had each other, but now? The war’s over and I feel so empty and cold… I don’t know what to do anymore._ ::

“I know, Bee. I understand.” she replied, gently patting his arm before standing up from the log and walking over to where the kids were on the blanket. “He’ll come back, just like Soundwave and the others will. They always do.”

After breakfast for the kids and the humans, everyone was back on the road towards the northeast. Dorothy, Cade and Prime had come up with the plan to find the people that were making Cemetery Wind’s tech and who the heck were hiring them to kill cybertronians. Of course, the woman thought it was be a bad idea to go back to Chicago after what happened five years ago, but that’s where the company KSI set up their headquarters in this country. She finally agreed to the plan after she heard that they needed someone to act as a mechanic and sneak into the lab bay. Of course, being a race car mechanic, Dorothy volunteered to go in.

Cade and Ravage were going to sneak in the scanning bay and use Bee as their car scapegoat while the rest of the kids were going to be helping with surveillance inside of the building and maybe causing a little mischief if need be. Everyone else would be waiting outside until they had some definite information on what KSI was doing with the cybertronians CW captured. Until then, this was just a blind crack shot of a plan and Dorothy was not very happy with it since her kids were involved.

Meanwhile, the kids seemed to be having the times of their lives. Frenzy and Rumble were currently sitting in Hound’s alt-mode and chatting up a storm with the army mech. Tessa was getting a ride from Ravage, but using his holo-avatar so it wouldn’t seem awkward. Of course, Ravage didn’t mind before he had Tessa holding onto him for her dear life. Laserbeak and Buzzsaw were sitting in Drift’s alt-mode and Ratbat had officially stuck to the green paratrooper like glue. Cade and Dorothy were sitting in Optimus while Toxin was taking another nap on his carrier’s chest. Their first stop was stopping at an abandoned warehouse complex in the middle of Kansas.

It took about nine hours to get from where they were in Texas to Kansas. By the time they got there, everyone one was completely exhausted from the amount of driving they had to do or from that fact they each of them had to deal with their own occupants. Hound was officially out for the evening because of how much the twins had talked to him on the ride. Crosshairs was still having troubles getting Ratbat to stop clinging onto his helm and Drift was silently glaring at the condors. Dorothy and Toxin was well rested from taking a long nap on the way up and Optimus had answered so many questions that he was questioning his sanity at this point.

Ravage pulled up into the warehouse and stepped off of the bike with Tessa still holding onto him. “Hey, Tessa. We’re stopping again. I think we’re going out to go get some food.” the mech told the sleepy teen as she was barely awake.

“What? Aren’t you tired?” the girl asked, removing herself from the holo-avatar of her best friend before her dad got any ideas and started yelling. “You drove for a long time. I thought cats loved naps?”

“I’m a panther, not a cat.” the teen replied, holo-avatar disappearing as the motorcycle transformed beside the girl. The panther stood proudly and his audials were flat with annoyance. “I am lethal and dangerous. I don’t sleep in cat beds and eat canned food.”

Tessa chuckled a bit and shook her helm. “Sure you don’t.” the girl teased lightly before walking off to go talk to her dad.

Dorothy was handling the youngest cassette as she watched that scene all play out and smiled, happy for Ravage. She was glad that the mechling was actually enjoying his life again without doing anything out of the norm illegal. The mother placed Toxin down on the floor with Frenzy and Rumble as she started to get some stuff out of her backpack, but soon just stopped. Something felt wrong, like someone was injured or was fleeing from something. Immediately after that feeling, the sound of jet thrusters boomed overhead. Everyone in the Haven family perked up and instantly recognized them, getting up and walking over the warehouse door to see a red, white and blue jet crash on the other side of the development.

“Uncle Stawr!” Toxin chirped happily as he pointed to where the jet crashed and Dorothy instantly felt dread wash over her.


	5. Chapter 5

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Dorothy goes to get Starscream and Crosshairs messes up.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hope you enjoy!

When you tell something instructions, you expect them to follow them through to the end and wait for you to give more of them. In this case, the instructions were allowed to be broken for two reasons: if the task puts you in danger of something or everything’s gone to hell. Sadly, it’s both this time.

Dorothy didn’t waste any time telling Ravage to transform and for the rest of the kids to stay put. She grabbed her youngest, helped him transform into his usual mode of an assault rifle and jumped onto the back of the black motorcycle, speeding off towards where the jet crashed. Bee, knowing what was going on, transformed as well and drove off after the woman and leaving the rest of the party alone to each worry, be really confused or both.

The three newer Autobots looked at each other with confused looks as Optimus and the cassettes decided to start setting up camp. Crosshairs was the first to speak up. “Um… should we have gone after them?” the paratrooper asked out loud, pointing off in the general direction that Bumblebee and Dorothy had sped off in.

“No, I wouldn’t.” Laserbeak answered back as she flew up to the rafters in the warehouse and started to make a metal nest of any spare train parts laying around. “Starscream gets jumpy around mechs or femmes he doesn’t know. If he’s here and not at the house, then something bad must of happened so he gonna be a little jittery. You’ll see when he comes back here so Dorothy can fix him.”

“Wait, Dorothy’s an inventor like my dad?” Tessa piped up, tilting her head in confusion.

“Mechanic, actually.” the other condor replied while helping her sister build the nest. “She used to work on race cars and stuff, but over the years, Ratchet had taught her how to do medical assistance on cybertronians. I think the medic liked her, but you couldn’t really tell. He was really grumpy all the time.”

“Yeah!” Frenzy added in, sitting down on a spool of electrical cable. “He threw wrenches at us! I mean, what mech would through a wrench at a mechling?”

The red and black condor glared at the younger cassette and quirked a brow. “You are kidding me, right? You poured paint all over his workbench, electrocuted him more times that I can count and you and Rumble raced around his medical ward like it was a playground. I am surprised you aren’t dead by now.”

“Okay, the paint was on me, but the electrocution stuff was Rumble’s idea.” the red twin replied, jabbing his thumb over his shoulder at his brother.

“I did what?” the light blue and purple twin asked, having not listened to a word that was going on in this conversation and was busy setting up his makeshift berth that he packed in his subspace. “Wait. What are we talking about? I don’t understand.”

“Wow. Ratted out by your own twin, Frenzy.” Laserbeak mused, crossing her wings in front of her frame and nodding her helm a bit as she tried to keep from laughing. “Unintentionally, too.”

The red and black CD player huffed up, crossing his arms over his chest to mock his older sister and stuck his tongue out at her. “Birdbrain!” he shouted, baring his denta at the condor.

“Exhaust pipe!” the bird squawked back as she flared her wings.

Everyone just silently watched the two sparklings continue to verbally fight it out except for Ratbat, who was still attached to Crosshairs’s helm was staring out the small opening that the warehouse doors made. He was silently waiting for his carrier to come back with his “uncle”. Of course, the little bat didn’t know that the seeker wasn’t really his sire or carrier’s brother, but since Starscream had been around Soundwave the same amount of time Ratbat had been alive, it made sense to him. He loved Starscream’s stories and when they would go flying. The seeker would let the little sparkling sit on his nose cone and let him feel the g-forces that he did when flying at Mach speeds.

Meanwhile, Dorothy, Ravage and Bee were still driving over to the crash site and getting more and more worried the closer they got. All of them were completely silent until they got there and had to drift to a stop when a dust cloud got blown over their heads. The indent in the ground wasn’t as bad as she thought, but since the warehouse that the jet had crashed into had a huge whole in the side of it. The woman got off of the motorcycle and everyone else transformed, carefully walking into the building and looking around.

Metal parts were pushed out of the way from the skid mark felt on the ground, marking where the crash had been. Starscream had transformed before he hit the ground, protecting his wings thankfully, but not other parts of his frame. He was sitting up against a while with his helm down and staring at the floor. He wasn’t moving that much, but he was clearly in shock. His wings were trembling behind him and his arms were wrapped around his cockpit. The seeker did not look okay by any standards.

“Well, shoot.” Dorothy cursed a bit, walking further into the warehouse with Bumblebee and Ravage following behind her. She had Toxin in her arms as she crept up to him and saw that a lot of his plating was dented in some places and that his wings seem to be leaking energon from the undersides of them. She squatted down next to the seeker’s pede and gently patted it, trying to wake him up. “Starscream? You okay, bud?”

Ravage could hear Starscream’s defense systems go online and immediately nudged Bee back a bit, knowing that the seeker might revert back to seeing Bee as a foe and not a friend. They all watched as the seeker’s helm snapped up and his null rays spun forward, ready to start shooting, but don’t. The tri-colored mech just sat there and flickered his overly bright, red optics around the warehouse as he seemed to search for something. His forearms and legs were scarred with black marks, which was a sign of strong electrical output. The cybertronian panther had only seen the seeker act like this after getting severely hurt or scared, which didn’t happen that often anymore. The mech was definitely at the end of a panic attack.

:: _Starscream, calm down. No one will hurt you here. It’s just us._ :: the scout called out so that the seeker wouldn’t be paranoid by whispering. Starscream seemed to recognize the voice as Bumblebee and deactivated his null rays, but his frame was still shaking. Bee kept his servos out in front of him as he walked forwards, flickering his optics between Dorothy and Starscream. :: _I am walking towards you and I do not have weapons, I promise._ ::

Yes, most of the times Dorothy would handle when Starscream would have this types of attacks, but this time was different. They needed to get the seeker back to the warehouse building they were camping out in before Dorothy could start fixing him. Since Bee was the only one big enough to help him walk there, he needed to get familiar with the frightened and shaken mech and get through to him before he could even think about touching him. The scout learned at twelve years ago the first time the seeker had an attack like this.

The seeker warily watched the yellow and black mechling walk towards him, shrinking in on himself a bit as Bee came to squat down beside him. The tri-colored mech bared his denta, being defensive. “Get away from me!” he hissed, wings flaring out. “Don’t touch me! I don’t want to be touched!”

Dorothy gave the ex-con a concerned look and changed her glance to look down at Toxin, who was bouncing up and down again. The little sparkling always liked Starscream, since they both had wings and the seeker, being a seeker, was always fond of the young cybertronian. So, the woman slowly walked forward and placed the black and neon green cassette on Starscream’s stomach paneling before taking a few steps back. She didn’t stay too far away, unless Toxin fell off, but she was pretty sure this would work. “Toxin, go say ‘hi’ to Uncle Starscream.” she whispered to the sparkling.

The little sparkling thought this was a wonderful idea and started to crawl up the seeker’s midsection a bit. The weapons cassette patted the air commander’s plating and giggled to get his attention, which was more of a panicked look than an interested one. “Uncle Stawr!” the little one chirped loudly, sitting on the seeker’s stomach and bouncing a bit. “Pway! Pway!”

Starscream’s optics seemed to re-dilate as he stared at the sparkling with a bit of a haze. That frightened mask seemed to break when the sparkling called his name and asked him to play, seeker protocols forcing their way through his panicked state and resetting his processor for a moment. “……Toxin?” the seeker asked, gently reaching down to scoop up the tiny sparkling and bring him up to his face. “What… what are you doing here?”

The little sparkling giggled and pressed his servos against the seeker’s nose, nuzzling it with his face before pulling back and giggling hard. The cassette fell over, squirming and laughing in the palm of Starscream’s servo. Starscream’s shocked demeanor broke as a small smile appeared on his face and he gave a small chuckle. He gently tickled the little one’s tummy with his digit, making the sparkling squeak with joy and made the mech’s spark lightened up instantly. “Noooo! Uncle Stawr, no!” Toxin giggled in between his giggling.

“Yes, you little bundle of joy.” the seeker replied, propping up the little cassette before letting his wings relaxed from their stuck position.

Dorothy smirked and crossed her arms over her chest, giving Bee a smug look. “Every time, Bee. It works every time. Nothing beats Toxin’s cuteness. It’s a weapon all in itself.”

:: _You are impossible, Dorothy._ :: the scout replied, rolling his optics at her.

“All in a day’s work for a mother.” she shrugged before going up and tapping the seeker’s leg. The mech looked down at her and smiled softly, gently lowering Toxin down so that the sparkling could be with its carrier. “You good now, Star? You scared me for a second there.” she asked as she picked the giggly little mech.

“I’m better than I was, I suppose.” the seeker replied, slowly trying to stand up on his pedes. He got up on them, but couldn’t support his weight for long and fell over, Bumblebee and Ravage quickly racing forward to help him regain his balance. Starscream gripped onto the scout’s shoulder and slowly got himself back up, giving a deep sigh after doing so. “Thank you both. Sometimes, I regret having heels on my pedes. This being one of them, unfoturnately.”

:: _You’re the only one who can pull them off though without looking completely ridiculous._ :: Bee commented, slinging the tri-colored mech’s arm around his shoulder to help support him a little more.

Starscream have a short laugh, closing his optics and smiling to himself for a moment. “Someone has to do it, or what kind of world would be live in? If I am fighting in a war, I still want to do it in some class.” he replied, twirling his servo off and flicking it aside as if he was flipping his hair, if he had some that is.

“Alright, boys.” Dorothy replied, shaking her helm at both of them. “Ravage, Toxin and I are going to head back to the warehouse where we and the other Autobots are camping out so I can get my repair tools out. See you two there.” The woman jumped onto the motorcycle beside her and rode off back to the warehouse. The two mechs looked at each other and chuckled a bit, Bumblebee stepping out of the warehouse and carefully making their way in the same direction Dorothy went off in.

It took about twenty minutes for the two to walk all the way back, since Starscream was injured, but they returned to mayhem. Frenzy and Laserbeak were slightly dented and sitting on the opposite sides of the building from each other, silently glaring at each other. Buzzsaw was building a nest still and Rumble was helping, leaving Ratbat to still be sitting on the paratrooper’s helm and refusing to get off. Dorothy motioned the two over to the back wall of the warehouse as Drift closed the door behind them. Starscream moved himself off of Bee and slowly limped over, swiveling around and sitting down on the floor.

The woman started to work, placing her hand on Starscream’s leg and focused on drawing power from the Allspark fragment in the back of her neck. The blue energy flowed from the metal to Starscream’s leg before bursting throughout his sensory network and shutting it off for the moment. She snapped back from the task, the energy withdrawn back into the fragment, and grabbed a welder from her tool bag. “There. Now you won’t feel any pain when I have to weld the holes in your wings.” she mentioned and see climbed up the mech’s chestplates and sat on his shoulder to reach his wings. “Mind telling me what happened?”

The seeker’s optics were dimmer, since the energy from the fragment was dulling all of his systems at the moment. It was like when a kid went in for oral surgery and walks up all loopy and silly. The mech sighed heavily and looked down at his servos, studying them with every fiber of his being. “Stupid Lockdown… fragging electrocutes me in front of damn humans and laughs in my face… I wanna stuff him in a pie and eat him…” he mutters, clenching his servos into fists. “See how he likes to be touched all over…”

Dorothy nodded, finishing up one wing and walking across to the other. “I see. So this Lockdown mech abused you too? How long have you been holding that in?”

“Traveled universe with him for a while…” Starscream replied, giggling a little bit to himself. “Had some fun times too~…”

“Don’t really need to know about that, but okay.” Dorothy winced back, sliding down his front and opening up an access port on his side. She plugged in a readout device and started an internal scan on his systems. “Anything else you wanna talk about with me that’s been bothering you?”

“I want Toxin.” he stated in the most serious voice he could while completely out-of-it.

Dorothy looked up at him and shook her head. “Yeah, no. Not happening, Starscream. He’s my kid, not yours. You’re his uncle anyways, so don’t complain.”

“Damn right I’m his uncle…” the mech muttered almost aggressively. “Best uncle in the Primus forsaken universe…”

The results of the scan showed that some of his internal cabling was fried, but they would heal overnight when his self-repair systems kicked in. She unplugged the device and closed the access port, jumping off of the seeker and smirking a bit. The woman placed her hand on his leg again, used the energy to turn on his sensory systems again and walked off to go put her stuff away. “Okay, you’re done.” she called up to him as his optics seem to brighten up again.

Starscream quickly snapped out of his stupor that his systems had forced him in and received a large surge of reboot energy in his processor, causing him to groan and hold his helm. The seeker looked down at the woman and glared slightly, hating when she did that numbing thing even when he appreciated it. “Thank you.” he gritted out and looked around to see everyone was staring at him.

“You know, when I heard that Starscream was coming here, I thought you would be a bit more impressive than this.” Crosshairs commented from across the room.

The seeker’s wings immediately perked up at that. “Excuse me? Are you trying to insult me, grounder?” the tri-colored mech growled, lifting a brow plate at the neon green mech.

The paratrooper rolled his optics at the ex-con and smirked a bit. “I mean, I thought you were scary and you know, an actual threat. But from the looks of it, you’re nothing than a giant stuffed bear.”

Starscream was up on his pedes in no time and aimed one of his null ray at Crosshairs. “I can be an actual threat if you push me far enough. Come on, insult me again. See how well it turns out for you, sport cars.”

:: _Come on, you two. Real mature._ :: Bee groaned from where he was sitting next to Cade and Frenzy. :: _Could we not? We kinda want everyone to be alive by the end of this, please._ ::

“No, let him shoot me. I’ve been itching to shoot a con so badly lately and since I have one right here, might as well take the opportunity while it’s knocking.” Crosshairs replied, pointing his two guns at the seeker in return. The little bat attached to the paratrooper’s helm jumped and glided from his helm to Starscream’s, perching on the seeker’s helm instead. The neon green mech looked hurt at the little bat. “Really, little guy? Him over me?”

“This my Uncle Star. Family sticks together.” the little bat replied, curling himself around Starscream’s helm and causing the mech to give a smug look to the other.

The paratrooper growled, holstering his weapons and walking away. “All you Decepticons and your loyalty. Wouldn’t be surprised if you went crawling back to Megatron and begging for salvation.”

That struck a nerve with everyone in the room, including Hound and Drift who were new to group but knew what was say shouldn’t have. All of the cassettes were looking at the paratroopers with glares of angry and rage, but didn’t move as they silently watched Starscream’s wings completely drop. They could see it in his optics as they flickered a bit, a memory probably flickering across them. Ravage was baring his fangs at the Autobot and Ratbat had protectively wrapped his wings around his uncle’s helm, hissing. The two condors bristled their wings up against each other and the twins looked ready to tear the mech into two.

Bumblebee and Optimus both knew that Crosshairs shouldn’t have said that and that the Prime would have to have a talk with him. The scout quickly got up from his seat and briskly walked over to grab the seeker before he crumbled back into the floor. Quickly, Bee grabbed one of the large car tarps and brought the seeker down over to sit away from the neon green Autobot, wrapping the tarp around the ex-con for comfort. Toxin, who had escaped from his mother’s arms, waddled over to go sit with Starscream and quickly climbed up to sit in his lap.

The most furious of them all was Dorothy, understandably. All of her kids knew what was going to happen next and it was not going to be pretty. The woman took her family very _very_ seriously. They all remembered what happened with Ironhide, but this time she had a weapon that was more likely to kill a bot. The Allspark fragment seemed to be reacting to her internal rage, suppling lines of blue energy all over her body and made her look like an electrical server board. “I’m a Decepticon, Crosshairs.” she replied, almost too calm for comfort. “Does that make me loyal to Megatron?”

“What?” the mech asked, a little creeped out by the energy that she was giving out. He could feel an EM field around her and it was full of angry and burning rage. “I don’t understand why everyone’s so mad. It’s just one little comment.”

“No, of course you wouldn’t understand.” the woman replied with sass, walking towards him and shaking her head as she cracked her knuckles. “You didn’t have to go through all the abuse and mental torment that Starscream went through when he was with the Decepticons. But of course, you think that it’s just one stupid little comment. Perfectly understandable.”

“Okay…” the paratrooper replied, starting to realize that the woman was starting to scare him a lot and took a step back. “I don’t see why you-ack!”

The mech felt his spark seize up and fell forward onto his servos and knees, coughing and in immense pain. The woman walked over and firmly slapped the poor Autobot before grabbing his face so that he would look at her. His cheek was now dented in from the power of her hand hitting his face and he was completely frantic now that Dorothy’s eyes were glowing bright blue.

“Listen here, you little glitch.” the woman started off, her voice echoing a bit. “Somethings aren’t meant to be said, and what you so flamboyantly stated was one of them. I am going to let you off easy this time by only stopping your spark from beating properly and slapping some sense into you, but you insult my family again, not even Primus can save you. Do I make myself clear, Crosshairs?”

“But-“ the paratrooper tried to say, but his spark seized up more and his voice cut out in pain before he could finish.

“Do. I. Make. Myself. Clear, Crosshairs?” she asked again, not joking.

“Yes.” the mech coughed out and the hold in his spark was released.

The woman backed off and the energy flowing through her body shrunk back into the Allspark fragment. Crosshairs was left as a coughing mess on the floor as the woman walked over to her setup across the warehouse and grabbed some food out of her back. She ripped open the bag and started eating, silently sitting down and letting herself cool off for a while.

Starscream was a little better now after almost having two panic attacks in one day. He was quietly playing with Toxin, nuzzling him and flapping their wings at each other. The seeker looked up only when he heard footsteps to see that Optimus was walking over. The seeker groaned, not really wanting to see the Prime again after Chicago and he died, but guessed it was bound to happen at some point. The leader of the Autobots stood in front of the ex-con and was mildly concerned. “Starscream, I am-“

“Save it, Prime. I don’t care for what you have to say to me.” the seeker replied, gently holding the tiny sparkling against his chest. “You have done quite enough in the past few years. I might not be the strongest of mechs physically, mentally or emotionally, but I know when to give an apology and when to not. And now, frankly, is not the time for such things. Save it for when I’m dead.”

Everyone in the room was silent after that, except for Rumble. “Soooo… who wants to eat some food?”


	6. Chapter 6

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The world starts to finally crumble down...

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hope you enjoy!

The next morning was gloomy and this time, it was not just because of the weather.

It was raining that day that the band of Autobots and ex-Decepticons were making their way out to Michigan. They weren’t going straight to Chicago yet, since they still need some time to confuse Cemetery Wind on their next positions. They were really close to getting found out against the previous night when the “supposed” warehouse lot owner came around to inspect the buildings. He walked into the hangar to find that everyone, expect Starscream and some of the kids, were in vehicle mode and in recharge. Of course, the man ran out to go call what Dorothy imagined to be the government and everyone got out of there before they were found out anymore.

It was about five hours after that incident and everyone was finally on the road again, everyone extremely tired and hungry. The kids, who had Dorothy to feed them and take care of them, were perfectly fine and went with their self-picked partners to drive with. Cade, Dorothy and Toxin with Optimus, Ratbat with Crosshairs, the condors with Drift, the little twins with Bee this time, and Tessa riding on Ravage behind them all. All of the Autobots had complained about how the kids got energon to eat and they didn’t, but the woman was thankful for the fact that Optimus defended her actions since the children were more of a priority than everyone else was.

And then there was Starscream. He still had all the energon he had taken from when the house was first exposed and everyone evacuated. Optimus didn’t have a justification for that one, since he didn’t dare say anything with the seeker glaring to red holes into the Autobot leader’s back. The tri-colored mech went off of the “finders’ keepers” rule, but Crosshairs started threatening and Dorothy had another fight to break up before it started. There shouldn’t have been a fight, but with the Autobots hangry and Starscream sitting there sipping energon with a calm smile on his face, everyone took it the wrong way immediately. The seeker made a note to himself to stay away from Crosshairs, Hound and Drift for the remainder of the trip, unless completely necessary.

The majority of the ride up to their new location was mostly silent, being that Toxin was still tired from last night’s events. The little sparkling was all tuckered out from being the resident seeker’s cuddle buddy when they recharged. The seeker kept having nightmares and Starscream was very appreciative of Dorothy for letting him do that. The little sparkling didn’t seem to mind though, even if he was super cranky the next morning and accidently hit his carrier in the face with his tiny servo when she tried to pick him up.

On the other hand, Cade was becoming a little overprotective of Tessa around Ravage, which was normal because of the “no dating” rule he installed. Of course, both the teenage girl and the cybertronian panther thought it was weird that he would think they were dating, since dating best friends was awkward and gross. The inventor kept checking Prime’s side mirrors to spy on Ravage and Tessa the entire ride while Dorothy was forming a plan.

Once in Michigan, the group split up into two separate divisions. Starscream, Optimus and Bumblebee would go to find some shelter for the night while Dorothy, Cade, and the kids went to go get food and supplies. Crosshairs, Drift and Hound were all happy to be rid of the cassettes that they were riding with, but unfortunately had to go on patrol around Detroit and make sure they weren’t being followed by Cemetery Wind trucks and cars. They were all more than happy to do it though, since driving with the children was hell and Dorothy knew from experience.

The woman decided to leave Toxin with Bumblebee and Starscream, being that he was too young to being shoplifting with the rest of his siblings. They all meet up in an abandoned lot, ran over the plan and exchanged children and sped off to go do all of their assignments. The only ones left in the lot were Optimus, Bee and Starscream with a squirming sparkling in his servos. They all looked at each other, Star glaring at Optimus most of that silence before transforming into his jet mode and speeding off to find shelter. The little weapon cassette was in the seeker’s cockpit and enjoying the time he got to have with his uncle.

Bee sighed, crossing his arms over his chestplates and watching Optimus transform and drive off. The mechling was trying to figure out why he had to be the oldest out of everyone, but didn’t try to think on it too much since it hurt his processor a lot. Starscream was still young in cybertronian standards, being a young mech and Optimus was a lot older and probably in his early middle of his lifespan. Bumblebee had been one of the last sparkling sparked before the war broke out and he was still a mechling, but almost a mech. Maybe it was because of what happened in Chicago with Optimus having almost killed Starscream and the seeker has been known to hold grudges for a while. The little scout just and went off to go find some shelter.

Soon enough, Starscream commed the both of them that were was this old abandoned boating rental place over by Lake Huron in the middle of the upper forests. There was a small fire there two years ago and no one has decided to restart the business. Of course, the forests were a open public space and no one would think of coming up here. The place wasn’t on any tourist or city maps anymore. The two Autobots responded with agreeing to meet him there and rushed over, sending the sent coordinates to Dorothy for when they finished her job of getting food.  Bumblebee and Optimus both got there at the same amount of time to find Starscream sitting outside and Toxin in a little boat a little ways away from the seeker, bouncing a bit and clapping his servos in excitement.

“Starscream.” the Prime called out, the seeker’s wings perking up and then dropping in annoyance. “I do not think having Toxin in that boat is the smartest course of actions.”

“The little one is fine. He’s having fun.” the seeker replied with a bite in his tone, continuing to watch the little cassette play around and explore the contraption that was a boat. He was amazed about how he was floating in the water and not sinking. He usually sunk in water went he got in it. Starscream smiled as the little sparkling chirped and giggled at him, trying to get him to come over with him into the water. “Even if he did fall in, the worst thing that would happen is that he would get some water in his vents. Dorothy has never had a probably with it before and usually checks her children for rust infections regularly. So, get off my back struts.”

Optimus took that as a notion to leave and the big rig went inside of the large boat docking house to check it for the usual standards. The mech didn’t know what he did to get on Starscream’s bad side, but he decided to leave it alone for now. Something must have happened in the past five years that he didn’t know about and the best thing for now was to live him alone.

This left Bumblebee outside with Starscream and the scout sighed. He really didn’t want to be in the middle of the ex-con’s and his leader’s problems, but he cared about the seeker’s mental and physical well-being way too much to let this go. The black and yellow Camaro walked over and sat down next to the large jet, silently watching Toxin in the boat. The little guy was still amazed with the fact that he was in a wooden boat. He pulled his knees up to his chestplates and sighed deeply, laying his helm down on them.

Starscream noticed this and looked over. He had never seen the mechling so distressed like this, but knew why he was. The scout had this longing on his face, like he was waiting for someone to come and sweep him off his seat. It was weird seeing him like this, all sad and lost but when you had a boyfriend like Bumblebee did, it was kinda hard not to mourn over it. The seeker wasn’t around all the time when the two scouts went on dates, but he had witnessed a few of them and how unremarkably pure they were in a time like this. He could tell that for the first time probably in Bee’s life, he felt safe and happy and normal.

“You miss Barricade, don’t you kid?” the tri-colored mech asked softly, only to receive a buzzed whimper from the mechling curled up next to him. The winged mech smiled sadly and wrapped his arm around the smaller mech’s back, letting the Autobot scout lean into him. The kid was trying to be strong, he could tell, and not let his emotions break him. He looked over at the boat shed to see that Optimus still hadn’t emerged, letting him know that the Prime apparently wasn’t aware of the emotional turmoil his scout was going through, or didn’t care. Why did he have to do everything around here?

The scout lifted his helm up to look at the seeker with coolant filled optics. His spark hurt a lot, it pumping in his chest so much that he would hurt it in his audials. He was still surprised at times at how caring Starscream would be at sometimes, but the comfort was nice. He placed a servo over the middle of his chestplates and cried a bit into the ex-con’s side. :: _I want him to come back…_ :: Bee whimpered, his vocoder resetting a couple of times. :: _I know he went away to protect me, but why couldn’t he had taken me with him?_ ::

“It would have put you at risk, Bee. He loves you so much he couldn’t bare to lose you.” the seeker explained, gently rubbing the mechling’s back. “And he will come back. He has a knack for showing up when everyone thinks he’s gone.”

:: _Yeah, but I want him now._ :: Bee replied, becoming whiny and huffy. :: _I want him to hold me and tell me everything’s going to be alright._ ::

Starscream rolled his optics a bit and shook his helm. “Bee, you whining isn’t going to get him here any faster. You just need to wait. He’ll come back for you. I know he will.”

There was a long awkward silence between the two mechs before the ex-Air Commander felt the little mech next to him start to shake. ::… _What if something happened to him, Starscream? What… What if Cemetery Wind got him and took him to that KSI place? What if that assassin mech got him and is torturing him for information?! What if he’s hurt or damaged somewhere and I can’t save him?! What if he’s-!_ ::

“Bumblebee, stop!” The scout looked up at the seeker’s face and realized he had been scratching at his shoulder plating again. It was a nervous tick that had formed over the past few years whenever he would think about Barricade. Starscream had grabbed his servos and held them down in his lap so that he couldn’t bring them back up. “Stop, please. You’re going to end up scarring your plating if you keep doing that. Barricade is not dead. He’s not. I promise you he’s still alive somewhere.”

It only took a moment for the scout to completely break down and collapse into a sobbing mess on the seeker’s shoulder, his servos and digits twitching as the mech held them tightly. After a couple minutes of letting Bee cry out his emotions, Starscream let go of his servos and gently helped the weak mechling sit back up. The scout refused to look at the seeker during this and just hugged himself across his chestplates. :: _I’m sorry… It just hurts so much. I want him so badly that it hurts._ ::

The seeker gave an understanding nod and gently patted Bumblebee’s back. “I know. I felt the same way when I woke up and realized my trine was gone. It’s hard to lose the people we love, but they will always be in here.” The seeker pointed to his chestplates over his and Bee’s spark chambers.

Bee looked down at his for a moment before smiling and nodding, hugging the seeker and sighing. :: _Thank you, Star._ :: he replied, wiping the extra tears from his optics. The scout looked over to see that the little wooden boat that Toxin was in was now way too far out for both of their comfort. :: _Now, let’s go get Toxin before he accidently sails across the lake._ ::

Meanwhile, Dorothy and the kids were having an absolute blast shoplifting a bunch of stores. Cade and Dorothy had a change of plans and decided to stay outside in the parking lot while Tessa and the cassettes went inside “shopping”. Since their names were on the wanted list of the government and the kids’ were not, they didn’t want to take the risk of them getting spotted by the police or anyone else. This time, Cade had come up with the plan and Dorothy only helped a little.

Ravage and Tessa were walking around the store pretending they were shopping normally with a cart and Frenzy and Rumble were in the bottom of said shopping cart. They would place an item they needed in the basket and one of the twins were store it in their subspace. One the other servo, Ratbat and the condors were in the security room and watching them over the monitors in case the supermarket security people decided to try and confront their brothers. Don’t ask them how they knocked out the security guards in the room, but let’s just say that seeing a large metal bat scared the scrap out of them.

The oldest of the cassettes was gently pushing the cart down the canned food isle and putting some soups into the cart when he spotted something out of the corner of his eye. The panther was in his holo-avatar, so his reaction speed wasn’t as fast as it would have been in his normal frame, but he definitely saw something. Tess was bringing some bread over from the next isle and stopped when she saw the teen just staring off into space at the end of the isle. “Um… Robin? You okay?” she asked, patting his shoulder.

“What? Who’s Robin?” the black-haired teen replied, snapping out of his daze to look at the blonde teenage girl next to him. She just stared at him for a few seconds before his memory jogged. “Oh! Me, yeah, I knew that. Did you get the bread?”

There was giggling in the shopping cart as Tessa dropped the bread in and shook her head. “What’s got you so distracted?” she asked, watching Ravage knee the cart to make the twins inside shut up before they were caught. “You see a mouse or something?”

“Har har, very funny.” the teenager deadpanned before pushing the cart out of the isle and down to another one. “No, but I did see something. I don’t know what, but I saw it.”

“Maybe you’re just tired. You did have to drive me here, after all.” Tessa replied back, lightly punching his shoulder. “Thanks for that, by the way. You’ve been a great friend after losing Shane.”

Ravage blinked for a second and replied that sentence a few times in his head before smiling. “Aww, Shane’s gone?” he asked, sympathetically and bringing her into a tight hug. He didn’t care if he just got friendzoned. Now that Shane was gone, he had a chance. He gave himself a little fist pump into the air behind her back before breaking the hug and going back to being sympathetic. “I’m so sorry. I’ll always be here for you, Tess.”

“At least, you’re sorry.” she scoffed lightly. “My dad thinks it’s a blessing from heaven.”

It was like a deflated balloon went off when Ravage realized he would have to get past Cade first before being able to do anything with his daughter. He mentally cursed himself before turning down on the next isle in search of some bags of chips or some snacks for the road. “Right. The whole ‘no dating in the household’ rule. Well, I mean, doesn’t it not count anymore because you don’t have a house?”

The teenage girl shout the panther a look. Ravage saw the mistake he made and continued on shopping. After five minutes of them getting the rest of the stuff they needed before heading back into the delivery drop off station through the back doors. After finding a place to hide, Frenzy and Rumble jumped out of the cart and started putting some off the food into their subspaces. Ravage did the same until most of the food was gone from the cart, making Tessa take out some bags to stuff the rest of the food and essentials in before they abandoned ship.

 _::Okay, Laser. You, Buzz and Ratbat are free to go. The rest of us are living out the back._ :: the panther called over his comm.

 _::Roger that, Kitty.::_ the red condor answered back, snickering as she could feel her brother’s anger through the comm.

The teen sighed, running a hand through the hair of his holo-avatar before leading his group out the back of the loading dock. There were lucky in the fact that no one was back here at the moment, so they had a clear path out the back door. Tessa and Rumble ran for the back door, pushing out the back with Ravage following from behind. All of them got outside and sighed, happy and smirking at each other that the plan had worked before they realized that they were missing one half of the twins.

Frenzy was still inside the loading dock, frozen halfway across the platform when he heard ragged breathing. He stopped mid-step and listened for a while to make sure he wasn’t imagining it. The red and black mechling looked at one of the side doors that looked to lead to a meeting room and squinted his optics with confusion. The small cassette took a few steps forward and leaned up against the door, starting to hear little bits of chatter and threats being thrown around.

The CD player was about to leave when there was a single muffled gun shot and a yelp of pain. Footsteps heading towards the door made Frenzy back up in terror as the swinging door was harshly pushed open and two human man walked out and disappeared out the back door on the opposite side of where his siblings exited. They thankfully didn’t see the tiny cassette since the door was swung in front of him and pushed him against the wall. The mechling made sure the two man were gone before entering the room himself to see what had happened.

From outside, Ravage had heard the gun shot as well and quickly started to panic. Hearing angry footsteps, he pulled Tessa and Rumble behind a wall as he heard one of the back doors open and a pair of humans angrily exiting the scene. After the cybertronian panther made sure that they were far enough away, he let go off Rumble and Tess to race back inside. Rumble was scared that Frenzy had gotten hurt since he could feel fear from his twin through their spilt-spark bond, but Tess held him back.

“Frenzy!” Ravage burst back inside the loading dock, frantically searching for his little brother. He didn’t see the little cassette, making him worry more. Dorothy trusted him with watching his siblings and now one of them might have been shot. That thought sent a shiver down his spine and to keep searching. “Frenzy, where are you?! Answer me!”

Soon, there was crying and the black-haired teen picked up on in. He looked over towards one of the swinging doors to see it was still moving. He rushed over and pushed it open, a dagger slipping out from his inner jacket pocket just in case there were more humans in here. After taking a look around, he froze and stared forward as he was not expecting to find what he did. Frenzy was there, but the person he was with was the reason he was crying so much.

There was a dark-haired man tied to a chair, his tan skin being bit into by the ropes around his wrists behind him. His head was hanging down in front of him with a pair of cracked sunglasses on the floor in front of him. He was bleeding blue, meaning that energon was spilling out of his systems and this was new upgraded holo-avatar. He was wearing a flannel shirt and jeans, both ripped around various cuts and gashes. The most concerning thing was the bullet hole in his right leg. He was still breathing, but it was barely audible.

The little black and red mechling was sobbing on the man’s lap, clutching the flannel’s fabric in his digits. Frenzy looked back at his brother standing in the doorway and sobbed more, coolant flooding from his optics as he broke down. “R-Ravage… help me…” he cried, shaking the man’s shirt to show how he was being unresponsive. “Help him… now!”

His older brother nodded, racing forwards and cutting the man lose from his bound. He fell limp against the teen’s shoulder and Ravage carefully hoisted him up into his arms. He looked down at the mechling crying into his leg and sighed with a shaky breath, comming his carrier. _::Hey, Dorothy? Call Hound now. We’ve got a problem. A really big problem.::_

Ravage growled at himself, sighing as he reached over and rubbed the energon off of the police badge on the man’s upper chest so that the Decepticon insignia was visible again.


	7. Chapter 7

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Secret's out.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hope you enjoy!

Everything happened so fast that it became a blur in front of Starscream’s optics, but all he knew was that Bumblebee and Barricade had a lot of explaining to do.

The first thing that started this chain reaction was after Optimus left to go patrol around the city before dusk fell. Starscream was drying off Toxin from his time playing in the lake, the little sparkling chirping and giggling every time the seeker would wipe off the water over his winglets or any sensitive plating.  Bumblebee had gone silent for a while, calming down from his previous moment of anxiety and gently resting against one of the nearby trees. Dorothy and the other had been gone for an hour now and Starscream was of course worried about her and the others. He made a few quick glances over to the scout to make sure he was okay, concerned about the scratch marks through yellow paint he had made on his upper arms.

A few minutes had passed before Bumblebee stood up from his spot and looked off towards the city, in a stupor of some sort of shock. Toxin stopped giggling, the sparkling demeanor completely changing as he started to whimper. The seeker became very confused, wondering what the sparkling was feeling that he wasn’t. The little cassette’s view was trained on Bee, his servos outstretched and making grabbing motions at the scout and started to make little chirps in his direction. “Beebee…” he whimpered, little winglets drooping down.

Starscream picked himself and Toxin up, cradling the sparkling in his arms close to his cockpit as he took a cautious step towards the mechling. “Bumblebee… are you alright?” he asked, very concerned now. He made his way over to the scout, trying not to get his thruster clogged up in mud and grim from the bottom of the lake as he walked out to Bee. The seeker put a firm servo on Bee’s shoulder and lightly shook him to try and snap him out of whatever trance he had entered. “What’s wrong? What happened?”

There was a moment of silence between everyone standing there in the lake, the only sound was small whimpers from Toxin and the wind blowing past their frames. The seeker was so confused on what was going on with Bumblebee and what Toxin was sensing that he didn’t. The scout’s EM field was completely retracted and close to his frame, but something else seemed wrong. It was like the time seemed to freeze around them and that’s when Starscream noticed that Bee’s frame was shaking and his stare was of fear and pain. He stood there for a good five minutes before time seemed to unfreeze for them all and everything came crashing down.

Bumblebee’s legs buckled and he fell forward onto his knees, one servo clutching at his chestplates and the other struggling to hold his upper weight up. A low whine escaped from sounded like his broken voice box, the one that was partially ripped from his throat, and he crumpled more into the lake. There was a trace of searing pain behind his optics and he finally lost his balance on that one servo, falling and starting to curl up into the fetal position to stop the pain from getting worse. The scout wanted to call for help, but his vocoder didn’t want to work with him and he didn’t trust his voice anyways.

Panic seeped into Starscream’s processor as he watched his all occur in frozen shock. Toxin was struggling to get out of the seeker’s arms, calling Bumblebee by his given nickname and starting to cry. It took a few moments for him to snap out of it, but as soon as he did, he placed Toxin down on the shoreline and started to gather up Bee. He slipped his arms under the scout’s and hoisted him up against his chassis, checking his spark rate and other things manually. The seeker took note that his optics were dim and started to pull the mechling inside the boat shack.

When being an air commander of an entire section of an army, Starscream had learned a few things about how to help keep someone alive long enough for a medic to arrive. Now granted, Hook wasn’t the best medic and Ratchet was a million times better, but neither of them are here right now so the seeker was going to have to do. Step one: if their spark pulse is lower than the stable amount, find something to charge it back to stability. Step two: if there is any leaking of energon, make sure to apply pressure to wounds if there is not a welder present. And step three: hope and pray to Primus that the mech doesn’t have any other medical problems before they can get to a medic. It was simple in theory, but really hard to do under fear and panic.

Once getting Bumblebee down on the floor of one of the side storage rooms, Starscream checked his pulse and was relieved to see that it had stabilized a bit but still erratic. The mechling was still taking in air to cool his systems, but he was still in pain. Next, the seeker searched for any sign of damage externally, but found none. He hitched his vents, realizing that this was all internally and debated whether or not to open up Bee’s plating. He decided against it after rechecking the scout’s pulse to see it was beginning to stabilize more.

There was a short fritz of electricity from the mechling’s vocoder and Starscream gently found the switch to remove it. It seemed to have shorted out after Bumblebee had suffered whatever happened to him, so Starscream would probably have to have Dorothy fix it. He inspected the scout’s face to see little scars around his mouth and noticed more scars along the neck cables where a mech’s voice box was. The seeker sighed verbally and gently pet the scout’s helm as he waited for the woman to return with the children, checking Bee’s spark rate every few minutes.

After ten minutes of waiting and having retrieved Toxin from outside, the sound of a motorcycle and a few sports cars echoed from outside the boat shacks. He sighed, getting up but froze as he heard Dorothy’s voice primarily over everyone else’s. She sounded frantic and panicked, which was never a good thing when it came to her, but she was being stern. The ex-con slowly stepped out from the store room to see Crosshairs, Drift and Hound walking in first before the others. Starscream was confused for a moment before he heard crying and that’s when Haven came in.

Dorothy was quickly carrying a human body inside the boat shack with Laserbeak and Buzzsaw swooping ahead to set up some sort of bedding. From what Starscream could see, the male was completely bloodied and unconscious, but still breathing. She laid him down on the mat the two condors rolled out for their carrier and she placed the injured man down on it. The woman quickly called for one of the bird cassettes to pass her the medical kit and got to work immediately. The crying was coming from Frenzy, which had walked into the shack from outside as he clung to his twin. Ratbat was sitting on his carrier’s back, helping her with patching up the injured man and passing her medical equipment when needed.

Starscream didn’t say anything and just watched silently with everyone else, taking in a few things about the person the woman brought in. He was bleeding blue, meaning that this was a cybertronian holo-avatar since they bled energon inside of synthetic human blood. The wounds on the man were also extensive. He had a gun wound in his leg, which Dorothy had to remove the bullet from, and several gashes along his torso. He had a few cuts on his upper chest and back, but that seemed to be the extent of it. Besides from the bruised cheek, it took the woman about an hour to completely stitch and bandage him.

Dorothy didn’t seem to notice Starscream until a few minutes after her work was done. She looked at him with sadness in her expression and sent the silent message that she needed Toxin, now. Contrary to popular belief, the woman did have an EM field. The Allspark fragment was just like a spark for the woman, being the thing keeping her live but also allowing her to express silent emotions. The seeker nodded, kneeling down and handed off the little squirming sparkling to his carrier. Dorothy smiled, relieved to have her child in her arms and walking over to where the others were sitting.

Ravage, who was in his root panther mode finally came in from outside and was tugging the supposed alt mode of the unconscious cybertronian into the shed. It took a moment, but Starscream had an epiphany the moment he saw the car and pieces started to fall into place in his processor. He didn’t really know if he felt angry, sad or really concerned at that moment, but it was possible all three at the same time. The only thing he knew that was everything that had happened in the past hour and a half made completely sense.

The alt mode was a police car, but not just any normal police car. It had the phrase, “To enslave and punish” written on the side of it. The seeker only knew one mech with that phrase written on the side of their alt mode and it was Barricade. That explained why Frenzy was completely sobbing when they came in. The police mech was the little mechling’s best friend in the galaxy, but now this explained a lot of things about what was happening with Bumblebee. This explained why Bumblebee was having a meltdown earlier and why he had a cybertronian equivalent of a heart attack ten minutes before the other ex-con was brought in.

Barricade and Bumblebee, sometime in the last five years, had sparkbonded with each other.

It became night very quickly and Starscream was silently brewing with anger. He had to lie to Dorothy and the others about what had happened with Bumblebee because he cared about the mechling too much to have everyone harassing him about his predicament. They had moved Barricade into the same storage room as Bee and Starscream had volunteered to watch over them while everyone else was taking. Optimus had come back at some point and everyone had informed him of the day’s events.

Now, the anger that Starscream had wasn’t towards Barricade or Bumblebee. It may seem that way, but it wasn’t. His anger was towards himself and Optimus Prime. He thought all of the way he could have prevented this, how he could have stopped the two mechs from being that life-changing decision so prematurely. He also thought of all the ways that the Prime could have done so and that made him so infuriated. He knew he couldn’t have done anything, since he was with Dorothy and wasn’t there at the time, but Optimus probably was. He should have noticed that the mechling that he had taken under his metaphorical wings had bounded with someone.

After a while, Bumblebee woke up from his healing and there was still a sting in his chestplates. He onlined his optics and looked around, noticing that Starscream was staring at him with one of the saddest and most pissed off looks he had ever seen. The mech tried asking what the seeker was so upset with when he realized his vocoder wasn’t on his mouth anymore. He reached up and brushed his servos over his lipplates, giving Starscream a scared but confused look.

“You are so lucky that Dorothy got him here in time to fix him.” Starscream seethed to the mechling, scolding him. “You would be dead if she hadn’t, you do realize this, yes?”

Bee didn’t know what the seeker was talking about until he saw the police car next to his pedes. His optics widen and he looked over to his left to see the holo-avatar of Barricade unconscious next to him on a bed mat. There was a moment of lag from the Autobot as he tried to figure out of this was just a dream or not. The mechling decided that his spark wouldn’t be hurting if this was a dream and transformed before activated his holo-avatar. He rushed out from his alt-mode and knelt down next to Barricade’s body, cupping his face to see if he was still breathing.

Soon, the young scout was hit with realization. The scout was still, realizing what Starscream had meant. They knew, or at least Starscream did. There was a bubble of shame forming in his field, knowing that the decision they made was stupid. The teen felt tears well up in his eyes and clenched his fists in his lap, refusing to look at the seeker at all knowing that the moment he did, Starscream would scold him for their immature act. Bee looked down at Barricade and finally turned to look at the seeker finally, head lowered in shame as he got out a hoarse “I’m sorry” from his broken throat.

The seeker felt his spark pang with hurt. He saw how full of shame and how destroyed the mechling looked, feeling his regret and self-hatred coming off in waves. Starscream bit his lower lipplate and sighed, kneeling down in front of the teen. The scout didn’t look up, but Star could see the silent tears running down his red cheeks. “I’m not mad, Bumblebee. I’m not even disappointed in you two about what you to did, even though it was an incredibly stupid and immature thing to do in the middle of a war.” he lightly scolded. “But you did it out of love and I can respect that.”

The blonde teen looked up, shocked by what the seeker had said and nodded, understanding and wiping the tears away from his face. The tears didn’t go away for long since there was an audible groan from behind the scout, causing the tears to flow back down his face. Bee turned around so fast that Starscream thought he was going to get whiplash and lunched forward to hug the form of Barricade, who had woken up during the seeker’s conversation. Bumblebee buried his face into the ex-con’s chest and kept himself there, refusing to let go.

Now, Barricade was completely confused on what was going on. The last thing he remembered was that he was being chased by Cemetery Wind agents around Michigan and got dragged into the back of a supermarket. He groaned when something clung to him and looked down to see blonde tuffs of hair under his chin. His processor lagged for a moment to realize that it was Bumblebee and he hugged the teen back, pulling him into his lap. They didn’t say anything out loud to each other, since they just wanted to be in each other’s grasps for a moment without words.

“I’m so sorry.” were the first words Barricade said as he held Bee’s face up to his. “I’m so sorry I left you alone and left you to hurt all by yourself. I’m sorry I didn’t come to see you sooner, but I couldn’t risk it. I couldn’t risk losing you to those humans because of me. Please forgive me.”

Bumblebee gave a small smile as he nodded, gently leaning forward to give his boyfriend a quick kiss on the lips. The police officer froze for a moment before slipping his arms around his love’s waist and pulling his closer to kiss back. It was their first real kiss in a while and the two of them enjoyed every moment of it, just kissing and holding each other. Soon, Barricade pulled back and pushed up the scout’s bangs, kissing his forehead and rubbing his back as they sat there with each other.

“Good show.” Barricade jumped at the voice, looking up to see a tri-colored seeker looking back at them. “I don’t think you two are in the clear just yet. You still have a lot of explaining to do to everyone else.”

“…Starscream?” the tan male asked, getting a curt nod from the mech. Barricade’s red eyes widened and he chuckled nervously. “Man, you look different. I don’t think I got to see your frame before I ran off to go into hiding. I like the more square like frame, makes you look beefier.”

On any other given day, Starscream would have taken the compliment from the police car and smiled. But today was not one of those days, since the seeker still wanted answers. “That’s interesting, since you seemed to be able to do something else before you left.” he quipped with a bit of anger behind his tone.

Barricade paused, wondering what he was talking about. He looked down at his mate, who was nuzzling his crook of his neck. Bee looked at him and lowered his helm in shame again, pointing to his own chest and then his partner’s. ‘Cade seemed to get the drift of what his mate was talking about and blanched a bit. “Oh… that. Um… there’s a perfectly good explanation for that.” he replied nervously.

“Really? I’d love to hear it before I call everyone else in here.” Starscream replied, propping his helm up on his knee.

“We… we thought the war was over after Megatron was dead and the Space Bridge closed.” Barricade told the seeker in front of them. “We thought we could start a real relationship and took the next step. It was only a week later when we found out that the government was disbanding N.E.S.T. and everyone had to go on the run.”

Starscream thought on it and decided that it was a good enough reason. Yes, there was no warning after Chicago that the government was turning against them so it was safe for everyone to assume the UN was going to give them sanctuary again. He remembered how cuddly the two were during that week and sighed, sliding a servo down his face as he realized that no matter what, what was done was done and there was no changing it now. “You two, again, must be blessed by Primus and be the luckiest mechs in existence.”

“What? Why?” Barricade asked, gently rubbing his sparkmate’s back. “What happened? And is Dorothy and the kids here? I thought I heard Frenzy before I passed out in that supermarket, but maybe I was hallucinating.”

“Yes, Dorothy and the kids found you and brought you back to get patched up. Frenzy had found you, from what I had overheard and everyone brought you back. Your alt mode’s over there.” Starscream replied, pointing to the police car over by Bumblebee’s alt mode. “She patched you up, but you are extremely lucky that you didn’t die. Bumblebee had a spark seize ten minutes before you had come in and that was probably the same time you passed out.”

“A spark seize?!” That threw Barricade into a panic, lifting up his mate’s chin so that he could look at him. He gently pressed a kiss to Bee’s head and hugging him close, getting a hug in return. “I’m so sorry, babe! l thought I had the bond blocked from you so you wouldn’t have felt any pain, but I guess when I passed out, it all came at you at once. I didn’t mean for you to get hurt because of me.”

Bee didn’t really care at the moment, leaning up to give a little kiss as a form of accepting his apology. The two of them traded kisses for a good amount of time before they both were strong enough mentally and physically to return to their frames. Of course, Barricade took some time to transform back into his bipedal mode, but he did it in a good amount of time. Bee helped him stand up and nuzzled him cutely. The two stood there for a moment before the two scouts started walking out towards the main room with Starscream trailing them.

Frenzy was the first one to see Barricade and Bee walk out from the storage room and sprinted over. The ex-con chuckled and smiled, letting the mechling run up and hug his leg. Ratbat soon joined and most of the other cassettes followed. Toxin was the only one who didn’t, since he was already sleeping in his carrier’s arms. Dorothy chuckled, smiling at the police car and shaking her head. “You have this thing where you raise from near death perfectly unharmed, don’t you?”

“What can I say? Primus seemed to like me a lot.” Barricade replied, gently smiling back and ignoring the odd looks he was getting from the other Autobots.

Dorothy sighed, walking over with Bumblebee’s vocoder over her shoulder and held it up for the scout to take. “Here, bud. I fixed it and it shouldn’t fritz out on you anymore.”

The yellow mechling didn’t waste any time putting it back on and sighing out. :: _Thanks… but I have something important to tell you all… Like, really important._ ::

“We both do.” Barricade added him, and securely held his servo around Bee’s shaking one.

“Really?” Dorothy asked, quirking a brow and smirking. “Wait, let me guess… you two are dumping us and going on your own little adventure?”

:: _That was one time, but no. This is more… important that that._ :: Bee replied, clinging on Barricade to that he had something to ground him as everyone was looking at him with questioning optics. It took a moment for him to say out loud, constantly looking over at Optimus with worry. A servo was held on his shoulder from Starscream, who had come up behind him to help him stand without falling over. :: _… Barricade and I… we have been bonded for five years and we never told anyone…_ ::

The silence over the room was deafening, everyone in shock and staring for a bit before. The two of them soon became concerned and scared, wondering if everyone was going to lash out at them. Dorothy was the only one to react, standing back a bit and looking at them with a soft smile and crossed her arms over his chest. “Congratulations, boys. I wish you would have told me first, but I’m happy for you two. You have my blessing, especially from Primus too.”

And before anyone knew it, Bumblebee and Barricade had a processor crash at the same time and fainted backwards into the floor.


End file.
